Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love'
by SetsunaKou
Summary: What will Elsa do to bring Hans back in her life after her new hero disappeared? A hopeful Ice Queen's search for her own true love takes her to the Southern Isles. Will she find her heart's desire in Hans' uninviting homeland? A new drama unfolds involving Hans' 13 brothers, his old enemy & international intrigue. Book 2 in the continuing romance trilogy of Frozen Again! COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1- Take Me Home Again

_Thank you all for_ _so avidly reading our_ _continuing saga of Frozen Again!_

 _We hope you enjoyed "Frozen Again: Faith, Hope, and Love'" (The start of this I Corinthians impactful verse) with all its adventure, romance, and fun all songfully mixed together in the fine Disney fairytale tradition!_

 _I wanted to give that first part of the story of adventures with pirates and mystic ancient treasures,_ _heart rendered re-meetings and blossoming love a proper close, so we could start our next new voyage of this sequel._

 _And now, this Book 2 sequel to my Frozen sequel is the one titled "Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love'" with the next line of that soulfully meaningful Biblical message._

 _I hope you all read Book 1 'Frozen Again: Faith Hope & Love' _s Epilogue at the end of the last chapter 'No Fear in Love' _._

 _I_ _t was there that Helsa, Kristanna & Eupunzel's first thrilling adventures, after they vanquished the evil prate Houtebeen and discovered their lost, believed dead parents, beloved King Agdar and Queen Idun alive._

 _The story ended as a cliffhanger, full of Elsa longing for a certain redhead - an awakening emotion on a level that our formerly withdrawn, platinum blonde Queen of the Ice never experienced before, that Prince Hans-some has evoked within her._

 _And now, we can begin Frozen Again's Act V where it starts us off on our next leg of our journey, with the promise of beautiful Ice Queen Elsa's new mission to search and seek out to find her own unlikely true love in handsome, heroic, humbled Prince Hans…_

 _Thanks again for reading and supporting Frozen Again as our romantic couples explore their love for one another in a new setting...Perhaps in this Book 2 we'll be traveling South of Arendelle next, to another Isle kingdom not so far away..._

 _Wherever they roam, there's sure to be romance, drama, comedy and intrigue for our trio of Disney fairytale couples! ^_^_

 _And there'll be an additional cast of characters Hans is familiar with in the Southern Isles, whom we'll meet in the heart of breathtaking Scandinavia, Odense, Denmark the birthplace of The Snow Queen's prolific creator, Hans Christian Anderson..._

 _Welcome to the new romantic drama sequel - 'Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love..'_

 _and NOW it's sequel's sequel the third book in my Frozen Again trilogy 'Frozen Again: Love Never Ends', just launched on 4-16-17 to see the continuation of this one! Please come and join in the romance and fun after you're finished with this Book 2! Thanks for your avid support and readership! :)_

 _P.S. Be sure to follow all 3 books to get the latest chapter update! :) And Olaf and Eliana love reviews!_

 _Your Frozen friend and authoress,_ _HarukaKou_

* * *

 _We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again'**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 1**

 **"Take Me Home Again"**

The large, five-masted frigate Feia had docked with the hauled Gler into Norway's northern island of Lofoten port for repairs of the battle-worn, but still viable, naval craft as it goes in for an extensive overhaul after its first lifesaving mission at sea.

As its weary passengers disembark to step on the stability of dry land after their long and arduous, incredible journey involving a ruthless wicked pirate, a ferocious sea monster, and the deadly Moskenstraumen, on top of all that, they could all give a collective sigh of relief.

Although, being the last to descend the gangplank due to a quick change of clothing to her more modest and less attention-grabbing purple velveteen dress and matching jacket, Queen Elsa of Arendelle stops to gaze longingly behind her at the vacant deck of the Gler.

There, so many memories were born for the platinum blonde woman and the ghost of a certain redheaded man whom she had made Kommander of both the schooner ship and of her heart.

Even if Hans Westergaard was no longer present anywhere on the well-searched naval vessel.

With one last glance from the corner of her eye, Elsa suddenly sees the Dane's svelte figure, tall and gallant standing on the ship's top deck. Kommander Hans Westergaard was competently perched, his long-legged form with his naval telescope in hand, leaning against the bulwark railing of the ship that he served as its courageous Captain.

Just as he turns away, with the moonlight silhouetted behind him, Elsa was about to call out Hans' name. But her voice chokes in her throat when she realizes there was no one really there, just some faint reddish streaks of the Aurora Borealis hailing from the distant sky blinding her eyes. And Elsa's hopeful extended hand, gracefully reaching towards him, falls lifelessly to her side.

As the sea waves crash against the still hull of the deserted Gler where it was moored at the Lofoten wharf, Elsa sighs into this darkened late July early 2 AM morn. Now that the Midnight Sun days had ended, the first fall of a true dark night causes the beautiful blonde to close her eyes sadly, feeling that her summer was nearly over.

"Is Papa really going to be all right, Elsa?" Shivering as she calls upwards from the pier she was standing on, Princess Anna of Arendelle's usual happy and bubbly face, contorted with worry for her dear father, brings the older sister back to cold reality. Gazing down at her orangy-caramel haired little sister, Elsa finally breaks away from her reverie.

The Ice King had collapsed on the Gler earlier, after all the strain of his newly regenerated body after years of debilitation, then his overwhelming taking on fight with the Draugen sea monster to protect his family and country. Finally his momentous confrontation with the Moskenstraumen maelstrom was just too much for him to withstand.

Now at a loss for control, their Papa was internally struggling to keep his cryokinetics in check. His feverish involuntary coping with the process of healing, even as his developed ice powers were rebelling against his mortal warmth, just itching to be unleashed.

So it was up to Ice Queen Elsa to keep her father's physical body cool enough so that his cryo powers could be contained to ensure that the miraculous gifts of his renewed arm and leg would not be in vain.

"Yes, Anna. If we follow the Snow Queen's instructions, I am sure Papa will be fine. Your Papa is tougher than he looks, min spadbarns." ( _my little one_ ) As she caresses her handsome mate's softly breathing cheek, Idun recalls her first meeting with her future husband, some twenty-four years ago. That was when her dashing Crown Prince of Norway had rescued and first touched the hand of this idealistic young Swedish Princess with his thin frame's surprising cool strength. Idun remembers how impressed she was when spectacular eighteen-year-old Prince Agdar lifted the surprised sixteen-year-old, Princess out of a rockslide danger easily over the precipice and up to his chest.

The certain electricity that had passed between Agdar and Idun on that special spring day had never been doused this quarter-century of constant love since…

"By the mercy of our Father above, your Papa will be normal again someday soon, with Elsa's help and a lot of rest on the journey home to Arendelle, Anna." Queen Idun answers her younger daughter, grateful to Gerda when the plump older woman comes scooting back-and-forth from the waiting carriage with a shawl to wrap around the diminutive Queen's shoulders.

"Yeah, he's a strong guy. I remember how he used to pick us up and spin us around the air like we were birdies! I was never too big to go for a ride with Papa!" Perking up, Anna giggles at the pleasant, fun memory, not too distant, of her ginger haired Papa, when her mother pets her smallest child's troubled brow and smoothes the wrinkles away.

"Elsa is the strong one now. Papa will be so pleased." Idun gazes with such warm pride upon her capable and ice proficient daughter that Agdar had spent many hours in anxiety over abandoning Elsa, all through their captivity, without ever explaining their ice connection when his Snow Princess needed him most.

"You're right! Elsa is **so** strong." Anna adds her own pride in her big sister's phenomenal abilities and capable mind to lead a country for these past two years without their parents.

Even from where she had been atop the Gler's vacated deck, the sad-eyed Elsa had been masterfully attending to her Papa where he was on the stretcher below, while Mama and Rapunzel were keeping vigil, taking turns singing their healing medley.

"I'm sorry, Anna. What were you saying?" Turning back on the Gler with a nod to faithful royal administrator Kai, who was ordering its repairs officially underway, Elsa glances to her little sister and blinks.

The Ice Queen had been continuing to sustain King Agdar's chilled body and monitoring his below normal temperature as the sailors carried his stretcher towards the coach awaiting their departure. But the dejected look that had left only traces of melancholy on Elsa's beautiful, quickly composed face, causes Anna to be worried anew now for her sister.

And though it pained her, Anna knew exactly the reason why Elsa was left sad.

"Just…" Anna smiles in the natural darkness, sensing how hard this all was for her Elsa. And even if Anna despised Prince Hans once upon a time, when she would have wished him to disappear like this, and just leave Elsa alone, many times on their incredible adventure, she didn't want it to be like this.

Anna loved her sister enough to recognize that Elsa's heart was breaking because that red-haired Casanova was no longer around.

 _I guess he's not a Casanova… He did truly seem to care about Elsa… And maybe this going away proves that he's not just mercenary and out to marry one of us to take over our kingdom anymore…_

The good girl in Princess Anna concedes at last that even a heartbreaking scumbag, like Prince Hans was before, could be transformed by the power of the Almighty.

Anna's mind whirs with the forbearing thoughts of Hans' unexplained absence, without looking for acclaim nor gratitude for his important role in this daring adventure, that could mean he was genuine this time.

 _Yes, I guess he did his share, and then some. Even I can't deny it._

 _Just when we could use a helping hand, Hans would jump right in the thick of it, over and over. He was there for Elsa, too, when she needed him most._

And now that Hans was gone, Anna could appreciate all he did for her sister, all he did for all of them. Even though she herself believed Elsa could do better, there was no refuting that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles had made a lasting impression on Elsa's once closed heart.

"I love you, Elsa." Anna sympathizes with her beloved sibling by wrapping Elsa up in a big bear hug, feeling the cool icy tear on Elsa's cheek melt into the warmth of her ginger hair.

"We'll all be fine now, because we're family. Imagine! We're a real family again, Elsa!" The loving Princess whispers in Elsa's ear with an ecstatic squeeze to her elder sister's thin slender waist. Both smiling Arendelle princesses then link arms to walk over the quay to where Mama and Papa were being seated into the waiting carriage.

Agdar's semi-conscious form is carefully placed into the carriage to prop against Mama's accommodating shoulder as she gives her children a sweet motherly smile over Papa's weak, but breathing, head.

The two Norwegian girls, who had seen far too much loneliness and sorrow in their young lives, begin to cry with relieved tears of joy in one another's embrace at the realization that their cherished parents, who had been ripped from their lives far too soon, had been, by the grace of God, returned to them. And now, with their Mama and Papa back, everything would be just like it used to be again. But this time better, now that they truly understood one another.

There would be no more hidden, concealed secrets to stand in the way of their familial love and caring devotion for one another.

"Oh! Oh! Warm hug time! I want in, too!" Olaf interjects himself into the sisterly embrace. His cold mounds race across the planks of the dock wharf to bustle in between Elsa and Anna's leg until the boisterous clumsy snowman unwittingly hug stumbles them down to his level.

The collective stumbling snowman knocks an unsteady-on-her-pins Anna to fall back splat on her bloomer-ed behind. Her flailing legs and arms knock Olaf apart like a crashed house of cards as Elsa tries to keep her balance to gracefully sink to her knees upon a quickly created soft snow drift.

Relieved, exhausted, elated, overcome with so many emotions, the pair of young women together squish Olaf's various pieces in between their hugged laughter. Now, at the end of this arduous, dangerous journey that they surpassed together, helping and trusting one another with belief in their sisterly love, Elsa and Anna had become so much closer than they ever thought they could be.

Looking into one another's glistening eyes, Elsa and Anna burst into gleeful chuckles now, acting like the little kids from the childhood that was stolen from them, together again. Neither care what the astonished spectators were thinking as some chuckle along with the giddy duo of royal princesses. Anna and Elsa laugh until they were both in tears to watch their poor snowman scramble around, topsy-turvy upside down and headless in search of his disassembled stray parts.

"I love you too, Anna!" Elsa was in full fledged tears of relief now, drawing close the little sister who could always make her smile into a hug from where Anna was sprawled quite unladylike on the planked ground of the dock.

"Why are you crying? Are you hurt? Are you sad?" Reassembled, Olaf innocently blinks up at the pair of females. The dense frozen friend only associated tears with unhappiness. He was yet to discover why humans shed their bodily moisture for intense emotions on either side of the spectrum.

"No, Olaf. We have our Mama and Papa back! Why would be sad?" Fully into Anna's sunny frame of mind, Elsa sniffles back tears to smile bravely through her weeping heart and prove to herself and Anna that she could be strong for their family to be whole again.

"Good point, Elsa." A much deeper, more masculine voice than Olaf's responds from behind, which causes a suddenly self-conscious, blushing Elsa to leap up and immediately rise to her own feet with a start at Kristoff Bjorgman's bemused voice behind her.

Pompously, a mortified Kai, in-motion towards the carriage, scoots around the common and shirtless, lowly mountain man's wide shouldered frame to hastily intercept and offer his snobbish assistance to his honored Queen to steady his charge in Kristoff's place.

Arendelle's snooty High Counselor was just finishing speaking with the naval yard's port master as they addressed Ensign Jan, who was explaining where his other injured Navy shipmates had been safely deposited on Mosken island, as per Vise Admiral Westergaard's order.

With a quick salute to Elsa to avoid her about-to-question stare, the young helmsman mixes in with the gaggle of bustling sailors in their busy duties attending to the Gler, until he can no longer be seen.

Though fully capable of standing on her own, a still splat on the quay Anna lets her adoring body be pampered and lifted straight up as if she were a weightless dolly to her rugged mountain man's muscular strong arms.

"Anna." With a smirk at good-old Kai, Kristoff only need utter her name for the ginger Princess to feel like totally melting into the ripped bare chest of her gorgeous new husband.

"Oh, Kristly? I've missed you!" Anna whispers, pressing her cheek against his rigid pecs lovingly as he dutifully rubs her other, more downward sore cheeks until they felt better after that tripped fall to the hard planks.

"You and Olaf take your parents and Rapunzel with Kai and Gerda in the royal coach to the inn, Elsa." Kristoff calmly says to the platinum blonde ruler as the troupe begins to walk down to the waiting carriage where Gerda was beckoning her girls to join them.

"Since there's not enough room in there for all of us anyway, Anna and I will catch up with you guys at the ship's launch with Svala and Sven later." The levelheaded young man offers quite calmly and logically as he easily lifts Anna in his powerful arms in Sven's direction at the adjacent end of the wharf pathway, where he had already seen to the two reindeer feeding and watering.

"How much later?" Elsa asks softly, as not to be heard by Kai, or Papa for that matter, when the quartet nears the carriage. The sharp young woman saw that certain glint in Kristoff's eye as her little sister swooned against her virile new husband's warmth.

 _GULP_

"Tomorrow morning?" A gulping, hopeful Kristoff was still sweet enough to blush under big sister Elsa's inquiring, penetrating gaze.

"Tomorrow, at daybreak. Just be sure you're early, before the Feia sails, Kristoff. I don't want to have to do much explaining should Papa awaken asking questions of Anna's whereabouts. Take good care of my sister." Elsa lays the ground rules to her brother-in-law with a haughty teasing smirk at the pair of young lovers on perhaps their last chance for the freedom of honeymoon bliss before the long trip heading home under a certain parent's frosty watchful eye.

"You heard the lady, Sven." With a broad smile across his face, Kristoff elbows his best friend as the reindeer saunters close for Kristoff to load blissful Anna onto the Rangifer's sturdy back, her olive green print dress blowing of the sea breeze as he swings her body around.

{"I'll do my best, Elsa. But these two are hopelessly incorrigible."} Sven projects his humored thoughts, knowing full well that Kristoff – and maybe a coy eyed Svala, who wondered what mischief lay ahead from the way Kristoff and Sven exchanged looks – was the only other one able to hear his words.

Elsa merely gets a 'HOMN! HOMN! HOMN!" coupled with an enthusiastic nod and accusatory big brown eyes upon the tall Ice Harvester and his piquant new bride.

"Come on, Sven, Svala. We have a few hours before being shipboard again." Slinging his dark cape over his shoulder, Kristoff salutes to Elsa as he mounts his reindeer and rides onto the Lofoten beachfront in between the craggly rocks.

His madly in love little wife was clutched to his back with her closed-eyed smiling face pressed to it in between the folds of his noble gold trimmed cape. Anna's arms greedily wrap to tightly slither around Kristoff's impressive bare waist.

Although she was still worried about her ailing, yet stable, parent, Anna had learned long ago to compartmentalize any negative emotions and override them with joyous happy ones, even during the loneliest times of her youth.

"Kristly? Where are we going?" Not really caring, but wanting to hear his voice, Anna murmurs deliriously in love with her brawny hero.

"I'll take you wherever you want to go until daybreak, Baby." Smiling, Kristoff whispers behind his shoulder in a husky voice to his beautiful girl as Sven rounds along the shoreline.

" _Come_ _away, come away, my love. And I'll carry you over the sea. Come away, come away, my love. And I'll make you as happy as me… You are young. You are beautiful! And I want you to be free… Come away, come away with me… "_ Kristoff begins to sing in his tender mellow voice to his pretty young bride as Sven kicks up the sand of the beach.

Kristoff's sure grip holds to his reindeer buddy's soft fur neck-mane as Anna clings to the rock-hard abs of her melodic love. Through all this tumultuous danger and frightening trouble, her Kristoff was always her solid rock, the strength she could always rely on to come running for her even without saying a single word.

The soft wind on her face, the crashing winds of the sea gently rolling over her ears with his steadily breathing warmth beneath her fingertips, Anna opens her brilliant aqua eyes to see the dazzling array of the Northern Lights streak across the dark midnight sky, as if just for them. And her Kristly's serenade made it all so perfect, so romantic, just like Anna always dreamed. She needed to feel his gentle, caring love right now and the intuitive young Wind Whisperer sensed it.

"We have 'til daybreak? Then I hope this night never ends, Mr. Bjorgman." Dreamy Princess Anna whispers rather amorously, her pounding heart racing to let go of all the pensive fear and heart-wrenched worry of the last dozen or so days when the newlyweds had a mission to tackle and couldn't focus on each other at all.

"I love you, Mrs. Bjorgman." Feeling the exact same way, Kristoff responds to her breathy invite of a honeymoon restart by swiveling his pure muscle athletic torso around on Sven's racing back until he and his lovely new bride were face-to-face with one another.

And mouth-to-mouth soon enough, too as they pick up where the honeymoon left off now that everything had settled down and the battle finally was all over.

The Snow Prince and Arendelle Princess' lips lock as, in always perfect Wind Whispered balance, the young lovers embrace their fleeting freedom while Sven races around the breathtaking Lofoten beachfront scarp.

With Kristoff and Anna breathless under the rainbow illumination of the Aurora Borealis' special lights emblazoned across the midnight blue sky, the flying reindeer pair running side by side, exchange a knowing glance.

Spontaneously as one, Sven and Svala take to soar to the aerial heights of Kristoff and Anna's love, carried upon the paths of those amazing shimmered streams of light glistening over the iridescent sea…

* * *

"Let's go, Olaf." Watching her sister and brother-in-law take off, reindeer bound towards the still seashore beach beyond the rocky hills west of Lofoten Peninsula, Elsa smiles. She then, as second nature with ease, waves an ice magic hand to salvage her snowman creation's multiple scattered parts to reassemble those squirrelly arms back into him in a snow flurry flash.

"Thanks, Elsa!" Olaf smiles toothily as he quite naturally uses those reattached appendages to grab hold of Elsa's lonely hand, even as the few others on the 2 AM quiet pier respectfully bow their heads to the regal sovereign Queen. Elsa regains her composure again to walk stately towards the carriage where her parents and Kai and Gerda awaited.

"I wonder what's in this interesting parcel. Somebody must've dropped it. I thought we already loaded all the luggage on the carriage roof? That was fun! Except the falling off part. Although my gal back home would think it funny. Eliana thinks everything I do is funny! Especially when I tumble!" Olaf giggles at his own clumsiness and what the snowgirl he left behind in Arendelle would think of his antics. Olaf, in passing, asks of the interesting small packet that he had picked up from the ground where the trio fell down before.

"Olaf! Give me that!" A red-faced and vexed Elsa suddenly scrambles to rudely grab hold of the half open package and shove it beneath her purple jacket.

But it was too late. Olaf had already seen the wrapped contents and surprisingly recognizes it right away.

"The blue silk pajama shirt? Wasn't this the one that you bought for –?"

"Olaf, be quiet." The embarrassed young Queen chastises her tactless snowfriend as she looks around, making sure that no one had seen or heard the exchange.

"Okay." Zipping his ice-sealed lip, literally, Olaf guilelessly blinks and smiles up at her as he reattaches to a flustered Elsa's hand to hold and walk the rest of the way to the carriage in amiable silence.

"Where is Princess Anna?" There, Kai was waiting for his young charges impatiently before giving the order for the driver to proceed to the nearby Vandrerhjem hostel inn in the southernmost, devastated village of Å. Kai looks around Elsa and Olaf loading into the carriage for the- _as usual_ \- dawdling orangey head.

"They'll be joining us later at the hostel, Kai. You may go now, driver. Please." An uncomfortable Elsa overrides Kai's questioning stare out the window in search of Anna and her absconded lowly mountain man consort.

"Good for you, Anna." Joining Kai's gaze out the carriage window to see Anna and Kristoff quite intimately close and kissing through the reindeer crossed skyline, Queen Idun congratulates her younger child's ability to take her love and run with it the minute she had the chance.

 _Which is more than I can say for you, my poor Elsa._

Idun wonders what happened to her older child's prospects of that handsome young hero, who appeared to have left the romantic stage, without even saying a single farewell, fond or otherwise to any of them.

 _Perhaps you frightened the poor boy off, Agdar. You do have an intimidating icy stare, min alskare, when it comes to young suitors come to court your precious little girls._

Idun looks down to the strong stubborn chin where her attractive spouse peacefully was resting his head on her shoulder.

 _But perhaps I was amiss in thinking my reluctant Elsa was ready for love…_

Suddenly, Idun's serious doubts are all dashed away.

While everyone else in the lurching forward coach was busied with some task or conversation, the keen eyed mother sees her blonde daughter, seated on the other side of the resting, unconscious King, quietly lean towards the window with her face behind her purple jacket lapel.

There, Elsa had buried her nose in the pale blue silken folds of what appeared to be a man's nightshirt, with a sigh full of stifled longing that only a woman who had known true love could understand.

"Psst! Psst! That **is** the shirt you specially picked out for JustHans in that nice little shop in Salsbrucket, Elsa! JustHans let me try it on when he was changing aboard the Gler. I wanted to know my size and if I looked good in that color like JustHans did. Then I could drop some hints for my girl Eliana back home to get me one, too. Maybe in a chartreuse..or a teal… But definitely not yellow. Ooh! Yellow and snow, no go! I bet Eliana'll get me a silk shirt just like it for Christmas!" Olaf gazes up to Elsa, starry eyed at the thought of his frosty sweetheart bestowing upon him such a sweet gift as Elsa did for her guy.

"I wonder where JustHans is now? I miss him and our little chats already." Olaf's soft inane prattle as he plunks to Elsa's feet on the carriage floor confirmed Idun's suspicions. And all hope on the front of love was not a lost cause for her darling Elsa after all.

For just that forlorn yet dreamy expression on Elsa's face at the mention of her young Danish Prince's name told Idun reams of the love story going on in her quiet daughter's heart.

 _So if Elsa did not discourage you, and I truly doubt her father could have stunted such a valiant young love that boldly dared to challenge an Ice Queen's cold heart and win it, then what did happen to drive you away, Prince Hans? After all that you did as a hero of our nation… I do wish your dear mother were still alive so I could contact her and ask of your whereabouts. Though we had only met that one time, I instantly felt a kinship with Queen Louise, as if we could open up and speak on any matter, especially concerning a fortuitous budding romance between our children…_

* * *

 _ **Just south of the Norwegian border, beyond the fjords…**_

"No! Don't, Ruddi! Father won't like it! Please don't! He'll blame me!" A tiny voice sings out from inside an old dark chest, clutching a bottle of paste.

"Shut your mouth, Squirrel! Or we'll throw the whole trunk into the moat! And we'll soon see if you can get out of that, Hans-dini!" The abnormally long-necked twelve-year-old with an alarming shock of wild, spiky blond hair and vague pale eyes spits out in distaste for the smaller boy, causing the bullied child to cringe.

In the feverish mind of that selfsame younger boy, a scene replays from his distant childhood that the 13th in-line Danish Prince would rather have forgotten… some 21 summers' end past ago…

* * *

Four and a half-year-old Hans didn't mind the dark. Maybe it was because growing up with 12 older brothers who constantly locked their youngest little brother in any one of the 66 room's hidden trunks and closets and box containers of all sizes and shapes, he was used to it. In fact, curious Hans reveled in uncovering the numerous secret passages inside of Egeskov Castle's ancient stone double walls. Often, his only getaway from his spiteful gang of brothers' torment, was staying hidden inside the recesses of their old cobwebby safety.

The boy, not fondly nicknamed ' _Squirrel'_ \- for the tuft of vibrant red brown hair that grew in quite a coiffed natural curl up the young child's forehead – had an uncanny knack for getting in and out of tight places. Not to mention the youngster's affinity for the wild grown nuts and berries of the land beyond the Castle moat in the hedge mazes.

Hans often scavenged there in his favorite beechnut maze for food when the bully boy brothers confiscated his breakfast and lunch and even dinners on evenings their strict father was not present at home.

If the unwelcome child could ever call this cold unfeeling stone castle by that hallowed and pleasant, warm name.

So, Hans had always kept to himself, trying to forget about his brutally unkind brothers, with one of his only escapes into some semblance of happiness—when he would gather all the berries and beechnuts and even some apples from the trees he'd climb to bring to his only pride and joy–a new dun foal in the Ladegården stables who let him be free to roam the glorious outdoors, every now and then.

When he was forced indoors again, 'Squirrel' didn't care about being cramped in tiny, musty old chests and obscured bureaus full of dust that the bullies would toss him into. Although they offered little air, the curious boy found they were so full of interesting old curiosities in books and ancient treasures hidden for forgotten centuries as part of their Egeskov Castle history, Hans was never bored. He looked on it all as a character building game that his clever mind would eventually devise a way out of the cruel entrapment in a sporting challenge for escape. So much so, the others would often ridicule him as a lowly conjurer, a looked-down on boy magician of sorts.

But all their taunting of his small slender build, the name-calling of his quiet self-possessed demeanor and stealing his few toys and books until he found his possessions discarded and torn to shreds in the forest, didn't bother him anymore.

But what the small boy _was_ terrified of was what his terse, callous father would say when he found out that the final page of his important treaty papers he had been working on and crunching the numbers of with Egeskov's many map drafters and account managers for days to finish in time for the pressing Royal meeting this very afternoon –

-Had gone missing from his desk late last night.

And the reason little Prince Hans was absolutely sure his father would blame him for being responsible for the missing document, even though the small child was totally innocent of the crime –

-Was because it had been torn to shreds by those naughty children who did take it to be locked inside the dusty old treasure chest with the tiny boy all night.

Hans had seen the wicked twins closest to his age, twelve-year-old, Ruddi and Rune, actually steal the page from their father's study desk and bandied it about with the other chortling boys as they plotted.

The group of them had snidely waved it in Hans' face, holding it out and hitting him with it until they forced poor Hans to rip it as he was baited to grab it back to rightfully return it to his irate parent's desk.

The young Squirrel had dashed around the castle with the ripped pieces in hand, collecting the bottle of paste in his mad dash around to the library. He fully intended on gluing the important paper back together and replacing it to the desk before his father found out that the naughty twins were messing with it.

But there were so many more impious brothers who soon joined in on having malicious 'fun' at Hans' expense. They were all so cruel to gang up against the poor child as they, en mass, chased their little prey down until they bagged him and dragged him kicking and screaming into an old chest.

The paper ripped from Hans' hand that the group of bad brothers vindictively shredded the rest of the way, rained down on Hans' head as they smashed closed the chest lid and locked it over him, taking the skeleton key, laughing and cackling as they all scampered merrily away.

Well, the moment that they were gone, Hans always tried to look on the bright side of even difficult situations.

At least this chest that his twin torturers, Ruddi and Rune, with the aid and assistance of at least four or five more of the older, bigger boys to dump him in the heavy chest and carry it upstairs, had to be hidden away from the servants on the east side of the unused, closed-up wing of Egeskov Castle's spooky attic.

Because at this location, the rising sun that was coming up would most probably peek into the large keyhole opening with just enough luminosity for this intelligent youngest Westergaard son to be able to read the document. He had, those long hours in the dark, already arranged together, by his fingers' sensitive touch, the ragged paper's edges and had fit the pieces together like the puzzle games he enjoyed playing at.

The steel nib dip pen Hans was so proud of was his one and only 4th birthday present from a visiting British special envoy who had a soft spot for birthdays. The haughty, yet kind-eyed and gentlemanly British representative of the Crown had come to discuss Denmark's economic ties with England in the agricultural sector and free access to the Baltic through the Danish Sound and Straits with the Danish King.

While visiting in Egeskov then, the tall, lanky diplomat on the wrong side of five and thirty, sporting a stub of a pulled back ponytail, took a shine to the adorably curious son of that late departed, warm and caring Scottish Princess. The British envoy who was continually attempting to light his pipe, once admired and tried to woo the stunning Princess in his youth. When Princess Louisa was still a flesh and blood, nymph of beauty in Scotland back home before this cold, cunning Dane conquered her heart with his overt good looks and sly charms.

And if her lonely littlest boy she'd never held in her arms looked like he could delight in this shiny and useful new friend of a pen, the generous man who delighted in caring for little children, would give him at least one parting birthday gift.

So with an ink bottle secured from one of the accountant's desks, the intelligent young lad had taught himself how to read and write when no one else was paying attention to his constant library excursions. He practically lived in the dusty old book warehouse where none of the other boys ever wished to roam. Hans was not missed by even the nannies who had long given up keeping track of the erstwhile clan. As long as he wasn't up to the mischief all of the other rascals were prone to, they let their littlest, only obedient charge to wander where he will.

So, Hans took out that cherished steel nib pen he hid away in his secret inside-inside best pocket from his hateful kleptomaniac brothers. With the trusty pointed metal nib he had become quite adept at, the four and a half year old had carefully sliced out a piece of blank parchment from the page of an old Bible blessedly left in the bottom of the chest he was prisoner of.

Upon it, the clever youth quickly copied every letter and number of the ripped up final page's figures and letters with such precision and diligence, he didn't even have to check his forged numerical equations or important letterings twice.

Mainly because young Hans didn't have the time to.

After he had deliberately copied his father's thick dark handwriting of words and numbers even down to the King's exact signature that the gifted boy forged, the 'Squirrel' had used his multifunctional, precious steel pen nib as a lock pick.

 _ **CLICK!**_

And even though from the inside the tumblers were more difficult to judge, the industrious young child who had not slept a wink all night for fear of what the formidable single parent may say, emerged from the cramped old chest soon thereafter.

After little Hans escaped the trunk, he carefully folded the neatly copied treaty paper that was near perfect to the original as could be, despite the fact that the forger was not yet of schoolhouse or tutoring age.

Without giving a second look to _that_ doll's glassy eyes staring blankly at him from her corner of the attic where it had been for centuries, 'that must remain untouched, or her curse would come to pass.' Or so he was told. This was curly dark-haired doll that his nasty brothers so often taunted him would come down the attic stairs and besiege him one day, as the youngest boy's room was nearest the attic door.

With a shiver, little Hans shook the attic dust from his feet.

The pliable youth squeezed through the opened attic window he had jimmied open with his many-use steel pen bit. Hans then began to fearlessly climb down the Egeskov's three-story, old rounded-stone, monk's brick conical towers as if he were some acrobatic lizard more than a four and a half year-old human child.

Through the rounded arch window, he silently snuck into his father's kingly study and managed to deftly plant the copied out treaty paper on the desk's edge.

Just seconds before King Herbert of the Southern Isles of Denmark first entered the room.

A panicked Hans snuck beneath the large carved desk's deep cavity so swiftly that the wind from his dashing had caused the paper he so slaved over to flutter to the floor nearby. But he didn't dare sneak back out to replace it on the desktop.

Terrified Hans didn't even dare breathe, nor let his vibrant red-head, covered with his upturned shirt, peek out from under the desk where his stern father didn't see the hard breathing child huddled in hushed silence.

The tall and handsome king, with hair graying at the edges of his temple, pensively paced the study before picking up the stack of important treaty papers awaiting his retrieval.

"One, two, three, four – Damnation! Where has that blasted last page gone?!" The ill-tempered King exploded, his fine-looking face which reddened with anger made his sour expression dreadful for Hans to see peeking through a crack in the desk top.

"Lars! Get in here! Stupid boy must have misplaced it!" Calling for one of his elder sons, the egghead one who had drafted the paper in conjunction with the harsh King these past two nights, King Herbert moved towards the desk rear to duck his head under the table in search for the paper. There, the frightened little boy was shrinking back, shaking his horrified head in cowered fear…

"What is wrong, father? Did you call for me? Are you unwell?" The elder teenage boy with dark hair and spectacles named Lars Westergaard, comes in from the Hall library where the studious lad spent most of his time.

Hans, who often shared lamplight with Lars in the library they were practically recluses within, was secretly glad that it was this elder brother whom Father called in.

Nineteen-year-old Lars, of all his brothers, was not as mean-spirited or vindictive as many of his other siblings. But the clinically logical teen lacked any amount of affection at all. Most of his interest was in dispassionate books of higher learning rather than joining the others in their game of tormenting their youngest, unwanted, 'Squirrel' of a littlest brother. The one whom all the others, from an early age, as their bitter father had taught them all, had 'murdered' their dear mother.

Of course, cerebral, well-educated, brainy Lars hardly believed that childbirth for an older woman gone wrong in this unsanitary day and age of medicine hardly warranted the serious accusation of murder to the unwitting offspring. So, he for one, held no animosity for Hans, as, illogically, did the others, stemming from the top.

As Lars walked into his father's study, his quick eyes beneath those spectacles and big ears immediately picked up that someone else was present in the room. But Lars was too detached to care one way or another as he calmly crossed the study to see what was wrong with those well-worked papers the irate King was thrashing about in the air angrily.

"What did you do with that final page, you fool?! I signed it and expressly told you to put my seal on it for me! What did you do? Mix this most important page up with one of those dusty old books your nose is constantly stuck in, boy?!" The bad tempered Danish King was always strict, but for these past four years since his wife – their sainted mother's – calming influence had been taken from him – _stolen by that despised child_ – King Herbert had turned into a bitter, ready to snap, often vexed man, as the veins of his neck were ready to pop.

"Father, please relax. Remember what the doctor said about your blood pressure. It must not be encouraged to rise further." Pushing up his glasses to his nose, Lars had sedately answered. He had a sneaking suspicion that the younger twins, Ruddi and Rune's marmalade hands were involved, once he had encountered the sticky edge of the desk, obviously having a dastardly part in all of this nonsense.

Almost immediately, astute Lars' furrowed brow spotted the missing page that the King was ranting and raving about which had obviously been blown to the floor earlier, most likely due to the downdraft of the slightly opened rear window.

 _Opened rear window in his study? Father is so stingy he never allows this already drafty castle any further heat escape…_

But upon examination of the missing document, Lars quickly noted that this was not the original, but an exact replication of the page he himself wrote up under his father's dictation but yesterday.

"Hmm…" Lars murmurs, marvelling at the interesting set of circumstances that could not be the end result of any of his other brothers' unsteady, unruly, or unwilling hands.

Not Kaleb, nor Anders, nor Ivers, nor Mattias. Not Didrik, nor Peiter nor Tøger nor Berte. And never Franz, Ruddi or Rune could have plausibly accomplished this painstakingly patient task to make such a precise, orderly and neat copy of his own systematic, methodical handwriting.

"Is that the missing document, Lars!?"

Now. there was only one in this troupe of brothers who could have personally accomplished what this teenage genius who strived to achieve academic perfection could do, without so much as a blotch or erasure, in this entire household—

"Umm…Yes… Oh! Oops... Sorry, father. The wind in this drafty old castle, you know." But Lars, whether out of pity or simply wishing to avoid a big drawn-out punishment phase that his harsh father would no doubt inflict concerning this whole kerfuffle, whether warranted or not, chooses to take the high road. The cogent young scholar would spare his littlest brother the assured wrath of one of his father's agonized whippings.

In one deft hand, the bespectacled older teen had already been warming the red wax seal for the King's crest that he had secured in his other palm from the desk where he had left it yesterday. To the paper that he had strategically flung under the desk, Lars quickly, yet cautiously, slaps the King's royal seal to the hot malleable wax on the flat of the floor, all while giving a wide-eyed scared Hans something akin to a conspiring smirk to have outsmarted Father.

"Lars? Lars?! Where have you disappeared to, you sluggish boy?! It is vital I have that paper at the meeting in twenty minutes! All those imperial visitors and Royal ambassadors have already gathered and assembled in the west wing's Hunting Conference Room! If I don't attend soon, producing this promised treaty, the name of Denmark's most prestigious Royal house will be dragged through the —!" The uptight, pompous monarch's high blood pressure was about to shoot straight through the roof as nineteen-year-old Lars and four-year-old Hans together beneath the desk urgently blow on the hot wax until it was cool enough to harden…

"Here you are, father. The missing fifth page of the treaty you signed for our land settlement and border security with our Prussian/Saxon/Thuringian neighbors to the south." Lars slid underneath all the other four pages the fifth. It was almost seamlessly similar to the original, with the fast-dried King's seal and all, save for the slight yellowing of the paper from the century-old Bible from the old chest Hans had substituted.

"Well done. Though it took you long enough, Bookworm, to find what the simple wind had scattered. You would have been quicker had you paid more attention to your fencing instructors and horse riding outdoorsman brothers instead of frittering your life away on those worthless library books of yours." The Danish King with the sharp tongue affords his third son at least a complementary nod amidst his damaging words.

"Very good, Father." Lars had answered civilly in his detached way, unaffected as to his parent's quick to be harsh words.

"How do I look?" The graying at the temples nervous older gentleman straightened his military jacket over his still handsome cut figure as he tried to calm himself to look regal and in charge for when he walked in the room with at least two other Royal monarchs.

"We wouldn't want that oddly eccentric Romanticist King Friedrich of Prussia to go back to the continent spreading false rumors of my ill health. There are all kinds of Gypsy riffraff there in Prussia to beware of, taking advantage of a young man's moment of weakness." King Herbert had said almost self-reflectively, recalling his liaisons with certain dancing enchantress and her exotic eyes, as he gazed into the full length mirror that the tall and handsome, vain man had installed in his study for just such spiffing-up occasions.

"That sentimental old fool even brought his young Swedish Princess wife to show off, rubbing it in my face how I recently lost my dear Louisa. But she's more likely there to hold her obese husband up. His child had been kidnapped practically out from under his nose around the same time of our bereavement. Just a missing daughter, for all their complaining. But it works in our favor now that the push-over Prussian King will fold like putty to anything I put on the table." The King of the Southern Isles assesses, coarsely ruthless.

"It's that young firebrand of a pompous French King just coronated we have to watch out for today. He is presiding over the meeting as a disinterested third party. As if there is anyone in European politics without a vested interest in this treaty deal! Besides, that silly cigar-smoking, ridiculously moustached Frenchman has already stated his entire kingdom could ride on the shoulders of some future non-existent son. Ha! He hasn't even landed a suitable bride yet! And should something happen to that one meager lad, where will his Papere's wealth and kingdom go then?" The dispassionate Dane had both learned and been taught the harshness of this cruel world in his unhappy youth and unfortunate life. So he did little to add much more to it than countless young men, all raised to be just like their cold unfeeling patriarch.

All except the last one, who was about to be blessedly sent away to be raised by the sisters of a charity school convent and be out of the Danish King's way once and for all.

 _Out of sight, out of mind._

"And as for that other matter were speaking of yesterday, Lars. See to it that your youngest brother will be ready to be shipped off to the Fattigskole convent for his primary education, plus room and board. Then straight off to the Naval Academy Sovaernet when the nuns have had enough of the unwanted whining tearful creature. Parting with the greatest dollars will be worth it if I don't have to see that wretched child's sniveling eyes trembling up at me again. There is nothing worse than a boy who so easily cries. What kind of pathetic man will he become? How could this be a son of mine?" The King of Denmark ran a frustrated hand through his dark brown hair. "Besides, Hans has been a disturbance to your other brothers, causing them to understandably strike out in anger at the boy who took their mother away. **He** does not belong here in Egeskov." As the King went on a long tirade concerning the boy who had been hiding underneath the desk hearing every word, Lars shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

"I leave Hans' dispatch to you, Lars, since you seem to be the only one who can stomach the contemptible child." With the symbolized dusting off of his golden epaulette decorated shoulders, the coldhearted calculating King Herbert took his stack of papers and left the study with a resounding bang of the door.

"You heard him, Squirrel. Off to the Fattigskole convent boarding school in the morning for you." Phlegmatic Lars said in his detached, not meaning to be hurtful, way. But the look on young Hans' horrified little face at the thought of being driven out from the only home he he'd ever known, to be placed in the Lutheran Convent of Noble Maidens charity school like a throwaway orphan was pitiable enough to cause even cold Lars to frown.

"But…When can I come back home, Lars? It didn't sound like Father wanted me around at all. Why, Lars? Why does no one ever want me? Did I do something very, very wrong?" Just as his father predicted, Hans, unlike all his other twelve brothers, seemed to own a sensitive heart that caused his lip to tremble and eyes shake with forlorn injured tears of sorrow for not being loved.

 _Just like mother…_

Stolid, philosophical Lars was old enough to remember growing up with the kindhearted vibrantly wild curled, red-haired Scottish woman in his early youth before her fiery spirit had been defeated, deflated and so beaten down by her cruel husband's cold attitude and his insatiable quest for innumerable son after son. So much so, his need to propagate became like a greed, as King Herbert relentlessly strived for so many overwhelming offspring in his ultimate plan for the Danes to conquer every royal house in Europe and beyond by eventual genetic attrition of all other nations not hereditary to the Danish kingdom.

To leave the mark of a proud Westergaard Dane's lust for power on the world at large, even at the cost of his own overtaxed wife's life to give him so many children, even one more too many, so late in life…

"Why can't I ever have a real home? Why can't anyone ever love me?" Four-year-old Hans was unashamed to weep openly as he stands alone in the midst of the room wiping his reddened eyes to match his red hair with the balls of his distressed shaking fists.

"Look, Hans." Lars had heard his smallest brother's plea and it touched him in some small way. Perhaps because Hans looked so much like and reminded him of his mother and the way he knew she would have cared for her littlest child.

"I'm sure Father will permit you to return to Egeskov for the Christmas holidays and Summer break from the Academy when you're older and he has mellowed a bit. But you and I both know that this will never truly be your home, Squirrel. You'll have the name and title and prestige of a Southern Isles Prince to purvey you into this world. But that's as far as Father will go. They all still foolishly blame you for what happened to Mother, especially him. I know you're very young, but you must rationalize that father and all of our other brothers will never welcome you at Egeskov. You'll have to find that wonderful home you dream of so much of elsewhere, Hans." The emotionless scholar came close to compassion as he reaches out a stiff hand to scruff the weeping boy's titian mane of wavy hair that gave Hans the nickname of a red squirrel.

"It's up to you to find that place to call home where someone will love you someday, Squirrel. There're too many forces against you here. I guess there's not been any love in Egeskov for years. Not since Mother left us…" Lars speaks from that small space in his cold logical heart that recalled his loving Mama with fondness.

"But there's a whole bright big world out there, where you can at least try to make a home for yourself." Lars' final words as he leaves the room gives Hans his first ray of hope that there was somewhere else out there that maybe could become that cherished place his tiny heart always longed for. A place where boy could feel like he belonged, a place where love could make it feel like home…

 _Maybe it is 'love' that makes a home, a home…_

And the small boy who had never known love, not even a mother's tender touch once in his lonely unwanted life, was to become an outcast of his own family. But if a small seed held a flower's hope on the roof of a windowbox through the winter months to grow full bloom in the spring, like he once read about in a fairytale story book one of Kaleb's little children accidentally left in the library one day, then maybe his hidden flower would someday bloom into a an exquisite white rose, too. Perhaps his own Snow Queen would come and take him away from all his torturous brothers, cruel father and empty life devoid of promise and affection, and bring him to her gleaming Snow Palace on a hill far away…

 _"Except ye become as little children, ye shall in not enter into the_ _kingdom_ _of_ _God_ _."_

* * *

 ** _SLAP!_**

Hans awakens to feel a quick, rough backhand to his cheek.

"Hey! No walking out on me, Sideburns! I've never had a little brother before and I'm not to let you get away from me so easily, Kid!"

The sky was indeed flowing by at the swift speed of the white mare he and someone holding him onto the horse that he had been riding through the clouds upon.

"Lars…?" The redhead's breath had all but ceased, his pulse practically nonexistent, as his consciousness had sunk to his worst childhood day in memory. That traumatic experience when he overheard his father say all of those harsh, heart-breaking words that shaped the cool, mercenary man Hans became. But still, through it all, that burning desire to be loved still lived in the Danish Prince's innocent heart.

But Eugene's tough love slap makes Hans groggily come to with fluttered open eyes, maybe just in the nick of time.

"Whew, Handsome! Don't you do that to me again! You scared us for a while back there! It's okay! The Kid's still holding on, Job!" Flynn Rider's cantankerous voice booms over the airways over his shoulder to where their Caribbean companion was astride his own flying white horse behind them.

Quiet Job silently nods back, adjusting the sheep on his lap, who baa's in pleased response.

"Forgive me, Storbror. _Cough cough_. I was…having a hallucination of one of my past youth's unhappy episodes." Hans wasn't usually the kind to open up his innermost thoughts and dreams, but there was something about Eugene Fitzherbert's ' _say anything I won't hold it against you'_ attitude, along with the older man's careless caring mixed with humor that made him easy to talk to.

"Ahh…I figured from the contortions of your handsome mug that you weren't fantasizing of your blonde bombshell again at this juncture." Eugene gives a sigh of relief to his weak, yet still kicking Lillebror, accompanied with a teasing wry smile.

"So…who's this Lars? The big, bad brother? Or is he one of the decent blokes of our insurmountable consortium of fourteen lovely lads of such good-looking – dare I say charming – genetic genealogy?" Eugene prattles off in typical Flynn Rider style, none too modest of his stunning features now linked with Hans' family's flock of freckled faces.

"Though at most times indifferent, Lars probably was the one and only Storbror who wasn't outright cruel or unduly hurtful. So, yes, I would class him in the decent realm." Hans answers fairly, remembering the times, albeit few but important to him, when Lars spoke to him kindly.

"So, old Lars is the 'only' good brother you got, eh?" Eugene asks, his eyes rounded as he fishes for a compliment.

"And you, Storbror…Eugene… In the short time we have been together, we have uncovered a close kinship, where you have been the best of brothers to me. Far better than I deserved…" Wistfully, Hans relates to his stubbly newest Storbror who had shown him more affection in the short two weeks they had been together than all the years he had with the other twelve brothers combined.

"P-shaw! Don't be going all sentimental on me, Sideburns! And no talking in the past tense! You are going to get better! Where's that fighting Scottish streak that I bring out in you?! That's what brothers are all about, I've heard. Arm wrestling, swearing at each other at ball games, swiping one another's food, clothes, women—in no specific order. Just another guy who you can generally hang out with, then give a good two fisted punch every now and then to knock each other back to his senses and laugh it off over some brewskis at the end of the day! " Flynn's idealistic outsider view of brotherly love amuses Hans to surrender to the genuine chuckle that the gregarious thief was purposely intending to evince.

"Ha ha! I knew I'd get a snigger out of ya!" Eugene laughs, though the mood suddenly changes when Hans' dizzy gaze turns downward and decidedly more solemn as the trio's flying horses just happened to cross over Denmark's Southern Isles.

And particularly over the dank, dreary landscape of the southern Funen Isle to the east.

"Perhaps the recognition of approaching Egeskov nearby was indirectly jogging my memory…" Hans speaks in a soft voice at the faraway glimpses of the centuries old, palatial Renaissance Water Castle. The grand castle of his youth was set in the midst of a large drawbridge that kept the austere, imposing grey building in all the depressed black gabled glory separated from the rest of the ostentatiously decorated Crown land.

The vast acreage was dominated by an artistic fuschia flower garden that displayed topiary figures in row upon row of well-maintained hedges that encircled the courtyard in a series of dramatic mazes of much estate landscape note.

Even the august _Ladegården_ , a thatched, half-timbered building that served as the acres of farmland agent's office, out in the far end of the royal house's domain possessions, was impressive.

"Can't say I am not impressed by all I could have been part of, had I not been born on the wrong side of the sheets! Man that's a DAMN LOT of land! Is it ALL ours?!" Eugene dismissively admits his illegitimate beginnings and all the vast richness that small detail denied the orphaned beggar thereof.

"Roughly twenty hectares around the castle perimeter and 1130 hectares of the estate, in total." Is all Hans dejectedly answers, lacking pride or any other emotion in speaking of his expansive birthplace.

"1130 plus 20 equals…1150 hectares…!? Whoa-whoa-whoa! That's almost 3,000 acres of prime Danish real estate! We are **rich** asses!" Flynn's money-loving mind flashes pure silver Rigsdalers in his bedazzled, greedy thief's eyes until they spin around his fantasized head.

 ** _"A-hem_**!" With a loud grounded cough to reel it all in, Eugene has to pinch himself to come back down to reality.

"Although…it doesn't look like the warmest of homes to grow up in, with that awe-inpiring fortress moat surrounding that massive, foreboding castle complex." Beneath his breath, Eugene's keen eyes discerned the stark coldness that exuded from Egeskov's twin conical towers far down below their aerial view.

"So, Sideburns! There's no place like home! Whoo-whee! Nice digs…" Trying to put on a positive face, Eugene lets out a low whistle at the sprawling twenty hectares of well groomed land that had a humongous, formidable looking Castle upon a moat in the center of it.

"That's not my home. It's my father and brothers' home. Never mine, since the day I was born. I never had a home." Hans answers in a defeated, sullen tone as he looks down on Egeskov from afar, wondering how his multiple fractious argumentative siblings had fared since last he was there.

Though he had not been permitted inside Egeskov proper, nor spoken to much upon his disgraced return from Arendelle, the punished young man had picked up dribs and drabs from the stable workers where he had been sanctioned to toil.

It appeared that most of the other twelve brothers had been vying for bequeathed rule of their dying father's accumulated wealth and business empire, not to mention the vast lands and grand Castle of the house in the elderly gentleman's final declining years.

And as each were trying to outdo the other in the Danish king's sights, they were all glad to have one less contender in their dishonored and disinherited youngest brother.

Oh, how they had enjoyed watching him shovel manure in the back stables as the first enforced wave of punishment the older siblings had worked out in their sickly father's absence for Hans.

 _I wonder if Father or any of the others would care to see me one more time before I go…_

Hans' depressed swirling mind vaguely processes the ponderous thought with a bad taste in his mouth that no one beneath in that bleak, unreceptive castle he was born to would even care if he lived or died. Not even his own flesh and blood Father.

"Wow. I'm sure your folks would probably **_love_** a big family reunion with me as guest star, were we not in so much of a hurry to our important destination, for some friendly chitchat with the clan right now." Irreverent Flynn Rider didn't quite grasp the weight of Hans' brotherly situation, quite unaware that all of Hans' brothers - even Lars to a lesser degree – didn't like Sideburns as much as nobody ever liked Eugene.

 _I guess us good-looking fellas have that prejudiced handicap to continually contend with other jealous alpha males._

"You can count on at least one big brother to stand behind you, thick and thin, no matter what, Lillebror." With a nod to Job to steer his horse eastward, Eugene whispers as he holds onto Hans. The boy had grown faint and dizzy from staring down at the passing Danish Southern Isles' landscape until the mortally injured Danish Prince comes to pass out again against his big brother's welcoming chest.

Flynn Rider did get the feeling from all the redheaded Prince told him before, that Hans wouldn't be so eagerly accepted back with a warm welcome home hug.

"Hang in there, Kid." Eugene notices the mortally wounded man's lackluster head slumping down against him a bit. And there, dangling over Hans' handsome head on his chest was that wooden Crucifix cross that Eugene had hung over his aching heart. The roughly hewn cross Eugene had promised Job to finish for him when the chips were down before.

He glances over to Job with a small smirk as he realized that maybe his dark Caribbean friend's belief in the Almighty was rubbing off on the irreverent former criminal, too, on Eugene's own never-paid-much-attention-to path to Redemption.

 _Hey, Lord. I seem to remember that you listened to a humble thief's prayer once before when you hung on that there 'ole Cross, didn't you? Well, here mine is: Give my Lillebror a chance to love and be loved once in his sorry life. I can attest that he's a good kid now. I don't know all the ins and outs of what wrongs he keeps confessing that he did before that were so grievous. But which of us poor sinners aren't guilty of something less than perfect in Your eyes? Isn't that why You had to send Your Son - to suffer and die for us sinful beggars to take away the sins of the whole damn world?_

 _(Sorry for the swearing. I wasn't raised in a God-fearing castle.)_ Eugene frowns at the memory of harsh orphanage life.

 _But I, for one, am grateful for Your munificence, that none of us deserved but got anyway, Big Guy. Just shine a little extra of that blood-atoning, redeeming Light on my kid brother. He could use a Savior about now._

 _I've heard there's power in this here rugged Cross to make the crippled walk, blind men see, and the dying spring back to life. Guess that about covers us, Lord._

As the wind flies through his shaggy dark brown hair aloft the flying white mare, Eugene silently speaks the honest prayer on his heart. He pets back the sweatdrops formed on Hans' forehead creased with pain, both physical and mental for one so young, with an anxious expression.

 _And while You're at it – 'cause I'm pretty sure You are ace at multi-tasking, God, from all I've gleaned over these years of skipping church services and being lectured that You were watching me slack off- please keep an eye out for my Brownie girl and her bun in the oven while I'm away, too._ Back to his flippant self, Flynn smirks with a thought for his loving wife's safety and welfare in his absence.

Taking this opportunity of Hans self-sedation, Eugene reaches into Hans' unbuttoned open shirt to reapply the healing salve tincture that Kristoff's Pops had mixed up for his wounded kid brother to put on, as he changes the not so bloody bandage at his ribcage in order to do so.

"After we get you all better, Sideburns, I am gonna bring you home to live with me in mine. My beauteous bride and her stupendous Godly family took me into Corona without a smidgen of royal credentials. They're good folk. You'll meet 'em soon. Old Fritz and Arianna would _love_ to have you stay with us for as long as you want, I have no doubt. And knowing my matchmaking Liebling Rapunzel, I'm sure you'll be seeing a certain icy blonde beauty soon enough… And the home of her icy blue eyes again…"

Eugene speaks with a blessed assurance in his heart to the unconscious younger man as they leave the skies of Denmark and crossover into the more familiar, welcoming landfall of Flynn's embraced Prussian homeland…

* * *

 _min spadbarns_ –my little one in Swedish

 _min alskare_ – my love in Swedish

 _Søværnet_ – Royal Danish Navy

 _Funen_ – pronounced 'Fyn', the Danish island where Egeskov Castle is located, was also the birthplace of 'Snow Queen' writer Hans Christian Andersen.

 _Fattigskole_ – The charity school wing of the 18th century founded Lutheran Convent of Noble Maidens in Odense, Funen, where Odense native Hans Christian Anderson was educated.

* * *

\- In 1716 Sister Karen Brahe founded a convent for unmarried women of Danish nobility in Odense, Funen. The convent functioned as such until 1972. The main wing was built at the beginning of the 16th century as part of a bishop's palace, with several wings by the river and a high arched cellar and big windows facing the courtyard. The interior in the building is remarkably well preserved. On the walls there are layers on layers of decorations such as panels, wall paper and wall paintings. The house has been completely renovated by Realdania Byg, known for their many successful renovations of historic buildings, and today it houses the H.C. Andersen Secretariat from Southern Denmark University Odense.

On the charity school wing of the Lutheran convent (Fattigskole), a memorial tablet tells us that it was here that the town's famous poet, Hans Christian Andersen, attended school there. The building dates back to 1570 and was built in a typical renaissance style with storey overhangs in part of a four wing complex.

* * *

Easter greetings, Frozen friends!

Our incorrigible, yet so good-hearted rogue Flynn Rider gets us into this most blessed Easter weekend's true meaning in his inimitable way with his honest prayer! I thought it was beautiful how At the Cross, At the Cross, he finally saw the light! God bless his rascally soul! ^_^

Now, the scene with Kristanna racing along the beach was inspired by my talented big sister's gorgeous illustration! You must see how beautifully she drew in her art of rugged muscly shirtless Kristoff, adoring Anna hugging him lovingly, and Sven merrily bounding along Lofoten beachfront! (Sven's neck fur is simply breathtaking to behold! I have no idea how Setsuna did it! Wow! I fell in love with the picture at first sight! And it fit in perfectly with this part of my envisioned story at last!)

What also fit in hand in glove was my recent discovery (thanks to my dear Sister in Christ friend! You rock, RibbonsandChocolate-chan!) of Jonathan Groff singing for "1001 Nights: A Love Story about Loving Stories" theater muppet show this stunning song 'Come Away'! So I incorporated that in this chapter too! Go listen to the wonderfully sung, mellow love song on YouTube, Frozen friends! And Setsuna's gorgeous art of Kristanna can be viewed by searching Kristanna on her DeviantArt 'SetsunaKou ' or Tumblr 'QueenElsaWestergaard' blog.

And a special nod to my good friend SecondAbbreviatedJP for inspiring Rapunzel to be Eugene's beautiful 'Brownie' now too! So cute I had to borrow the no longer 'Blondie' gal's more spot-on moniker! Thanks JP-sama!

* * *

So, to hop into the Easter celebration properly, there are a dozen Easter eggs hidden in this special chapter! How many did you find? ^0*

* * *

Give up? Here they are:

\- King Friedrich (Fritz for short ^_^) & Queen Arianna (I had to alter Rapunzel's real parents' names, due to the release of the 'Tangled: Before Ever After' TV show due out in 2017) were attending King Herbert's important meeting.

\- Hans' brother bully boy, Ruddi, one of twins, described in the latter half of the chapter with a wild shock of blond hair and vague eyes, looks just like his Scottish ancestor Dingwall from 'Brave' and Hans' long-deceased Mother was the spitting image of Merida from 'Brave' with the 'vibrantly wild curled, red-haired Scottish beauty with fiery spirit'. Hmmmm…

\- Egeskov Castle & its beech mazes, topiary figures, fuschia garden labyrinth is really located in the Southern Isles of Denmark, right where the map in Frozen Fever pointed.

\- And, who was that unnamed, gentlemanly 'special British envoy' who kept lighting his pipe and generously gave Hans his steel nib pen as a birthday present because he was sweet on his mother? Sounds like old Grimsby from 'The Little Mermaid' in his heady youthful days to me!

\- The new foal in the Ladegården stables was Hans' horse Sitron, featured in the Frozen movie.

\- There is a real-life spooky legend of the cursed doll in the Egeskov Castle attic that if moved, ghastly things have been purported to befall the occupants.

\- King Herbert, as per the semi-secret taboo custom of the discreet day, has an illegitimate son with the surname 'Fitzherbert' (guess who?)

\- The gypsy ' _dancing enchantress with exotic eyes'_ mistress who left Hans' father with a lasting memory (and illegitimate son) was based on Esmeralda from 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.

\- Fattigskole, the charity school wing of the Lutheran convent Hans was sent to as a boy, actually has a memorial tablet that tells us it was there that the town's famous poet, Hans Christian Andersen, attended school.

\- It was Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Snow Queen'' book little Hans found in the library.

\- Olaf's new 'girlfriend' from 'Frozen''s Christmas special? was mentioned, as purported by Josh Gad (Olaf's Voice actor).

\- Kristoff's 'Come Away' song for his Anna, as performed by mellow voiced Jonathan Groff, was featured in the story to accompany SetsunaKou's stunning artwork.

\- Extra marshmallow peeps to those who figure out and identify who that young cigar smoking firebrand of a French King who so staked his entire kingdom on the pride and joy of his unborn son!

There! A Baker's Dozen of Hidden Easter Eggs! ^0^  
(Actually Lucky#13, as Prince Hans in his march of brothers, and Elsa in Disney princess line, both are!)

Have fun on this Frozen Easter Egg Hunt, dear friends!

* * *

Tell me what you think of our Easterrific extravaganza! ^_^

And thanks for reading this half flashback/ half flashforward episode of Frozen Again!

Please have a Happy and Blessed Resurrection Day Easter, giving thanks and praise with your families and friends in sharing the perfect, sacrificial Love of our dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

God bless you! Jesus loves you!

HarukaKou

* * *

 _Hello, Frozen friends!_

 _After this adventurous book's journey, to continue the romantic saga of "Frozen Again: Faith, Hope and Love", please read on in the romance drama sequel "Frozen Again: But the Greatest if These of Love", and now it's triquel : 'Frozen Again: Love Never Ends'._

 _NOW the sequel has a sequel, published on this latest Easter day again! 'Frozen Again: Love Never Ends' has begun!: The newest story in Helsa's love affair has just been launched on Easter day 2017 to see the continuation of this Book 2 with Book 3! Please follow and read and review the third book in my Frozen Again trilogy's conclusion, and join in the romance, adventure and fun after you're finished with this Book 2! And always, thanks for your avid support and readership, my Frozen friends! :)_

 _I am currently working on the next exciting chapter of Book 3 "Frozen Again: Love Never Ends", to be published next week. It will pick up right where the second book "_ _But the Greatest if These of Love_ _" left off._

 _The saga of a forgiving love's discovery continues! Helsa, Kristanna, Eupunzel and Agdun's romance stories will keep going for much, much more drama, fun and adventures in love to come in the second and third books in this Frozen Again series!_

 _Thank you all for your generous kindness and unfailing support these past three years of scripting my first two 'Frozen' sequel novels! Your reviews and messages have always been so uplifting and inspired me to write more all this blessed time together!_

 _HarukaKou_ _)_

 _P.S. Be sure to follow all 3 books to get the latest chapter update! :) And Olaf and Eliana love reviews!_


	2. Chapter 2 - Much Less Touchy-Feely

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 2**

 **"Much Less Touchy-Feely"**

 _Hidden deep within the twisted forests of_ _Prussia_ _…_

"Have you seen my favorite thimble, Bruiser? The polkadot one with the little hearts on it? I've been searching every inch of the surgery all morning for it! "A tall, thin and opinionated man with a pair of thick brown pigtails comes pensively skulking into the connected brightly lit room in a rage of irritated frustration.

There, a dramatically opposed, quiet, hulking brute with shock of short mahogany hair, big rounded nose and cleft in his ample chin merely glances up from his own tedious work.

"No, Killer." The soft-spoken giant pauses his deft knitting needles and string of yarn along with the tiny orchid pink mitten he had been painstakingly knitting for weeks now. The obsessive perfectionist man who had pulled out more stitches from the well-made rosy mitten until the result was picture perfect as he envisioned, was as different from his garrulous older brother as he could be.

"Well, didn't I see you playing with it yesterday, when you were cleaning up with Ulf after we operated on Thor's ulcer so he could get back to arranging flowers for the Church bowery?" Killer accuses his partner of a younger sibling who the skilled-with-needle-and-thread ex-con had opened a medical practice with two years this March.

And his clean freak little brother was always messing with his precious tradesman's tools, neatly stacking needles, scissors, spools of suture thread, etc. here or there in some such compulsive disorder.

"No, Killer." Bruiser repeats the same answer in just as calm and even a tone. The gentle giant of a man gives a little sigh as he puts aside the tiny little plummy pink mitten that would barely fit one of his large burly fingers, let alone the gargantuan's monstrous hands that seemed out of place doing this delicate needlework.

"Then what in hell happened to it?! How can I function in this place?! How do you expect me to perform my magic on our patients without my special tools!?" Seriously holding his skillful hands up in the air like a proud surgeon, the nervous, irrelevant man was practically twitching from head to toe as he wrenches off the spiked, needle embedded, Viking-type silver helmet so he could scratch at his spinning scrap of hair at top.

Killer scratches so thoroughly violent that the multicolored spools of thread strapped all across his chest and hip were set a-jiggling.

"Please calm down, Killer. And please don't use that foul language when you are in the doctor's office. We run a respectful establishment." Gentle Bruiser, as usual, must use his lilting, high-pitched, effeminate voice to tone down his gravelly partner's nerves. The big bruiser practitioner tranquilly continues his knitting again where he was seated at the outpatient's front desk of their humble clinic while Shorty, the receptionist, was taking his dinner with ' _a tall drink of water'_.

 _That older gentleman certainly does like to keep liquefied_.

It was ingenious how the clinic's vestibule had been built partly inside the carved out opening of a centuries-old Prussian white oak tree. The fifteen meter wide girth of the huge tree had been hollowed out and was previously used by the thugs as their secret hideout from the authorities.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" The frustrated former Killer with the gifted hands runs his tensile extremities through his greasy mat of thinning hair at the crown of his elongated head once again.

"You think we left my thimble inside of Big Nose last night when we took out his last-minute goiter nodule that everyone finally convinced him to get rid of before his wedding tomorrow?" The suddenly perplexed look crossing Killer's face is reflected in Bruiser's shocked one, as both wide-eyed, reformed criminals swallow hard simultaneously.

 _Knock! Knock! Knock!_

Both brothers nearly jump ten feet in the air at the abrupt, after-hours rapped door interruption.

"Sorry, we're closed. Come again the day after tomorrow please. We have a wedding service to attend in the morning. Thank you. Have a nice day." The pleasantly loquacious man with the tender throat projects his loudest assertion after recovering first from the surprise.

"I wonder if Princess Rapunzel and her thief will make it back in time for Big Nose's wedding tomorrow." Killer muses aloud after seeing in the corner of his eye one of Rapunzel's prized paintings full of pastel colors depicting the forest waterfall some trodden path away from the Snuggly Duckling tavern they called home.

The Corona Princess herself had hung the painting on their self-employed business wall on the day that 'Leave You in Stitches' clinic opened, with their benevolent and proud Princess pal and fellow dreamer as its royal sponsor.

"Come on! Killer! Bruiser! Open up! We've got an emergency!" Hookhand's sharp silvery appendage bangs against the hollowed out tree's fitted closed door entry on the other side.

"I'm reduced to being just 'her thief'!? Ouch. I heard that." A muffled voice complains from without.

"Is that the best you guys can do for your gracious and munificent Prince of the Realm? After all we've been through together, fellas. I'm hurt." Feigning dismayed feelings on his devastatingly gorgeous face as the door is flung open, Flynn Rider peeks his head in to greet the pair of industrious Snuggly Duckling attendees with a familiar smirk.

"Prince, hmph! You're just one of us common criminals lucky enough to have a comely mug, Pretty Boy." The slight, squirrelly felon named 'Fang' chirps in, as Bruiser signals the tag along pub thug member to leave his ever-present rats outside their scrubbed clean clinic's doorway.

Vladimir, another one of the Snuggly Duckling members of petty pilferers and lawless felons on the lam, hunkers down in through the doorway after Eugene.

"A pretty mug _and_ a charming personality, thank you very much." Flynn's uneasy anxiety is vented in his witty repartee with the familiar motley crew.

"Which my little brother here shares in tenfold. Especially when it comes to a certain icy lady. That is, if you guys can fix him up back to fully functional working order again, so I can bring him back in tip-top shape to his gal." Flynn had seen enough of their past work of hands-on vast experience in patching every type and severity of fatal wounds, ugly gashes, broken bones or nasty cuts. The job the pair did with deep stabs, bloody lacerations or any otherwise violent body invasion known to man, was impressive enough for Flynn to trust this issue to the talented brothers.

Whenever their fellow erstwhile compatriots of thuggery often came back to the Snuggly Duckling suffering from the ill effects of their reckless lifestyle's injuries, the enterprising brothers made a productive business in stitching each back up to nearly good as new condition.

And the 'Leave You in Stitches' medical establishment was founded to not only keep their criminal class brethren healthier and whole, but to rake in enough pfennings by their talented hands' acumen, now that they were on the path of the straight and honest.

"You have a brother, too?" Bruiser quietly comments as he gathers Prince Hans' limp body from Eugene's arms, even as Killer eyes the unwelcome stranger to their black sheep fold.

"My kid brother, from up north, named Hans. He's been in and out of consciousness after being knifed in the gut yesterday. I said to myself, if anyone can pull him through this, it would be you two amazing miracle workers. So here we are. I've actually got two cases for your high-in-demand, inimitable, quality services, fellas. But start with Hans here, 'cause he's worse off, I think." Whether Flynn was putting on the schmooze, or if he really believed in this unlikely pair of self-trained 'medical' men who pulled off more than a few miracles since their Royal Corona sponsored clinic opened to the public, he had their attention either way.

"He looks too smart and too good-looking to be related to you, Thief. See his perfect celestial nose? Nothing like yours, anatomically speaking." Giving vainglorious Flynn a spiteful poke in his Roman nose to get out of his way, Killer, well-versed in human anatomy, couldn't resist adding the snide disparaging criticism of the touchy nasal subject as he clears the surgery table for Bruiser to place the insensible redhead there.

"I like him. I think he looks nice, even if he's in pain." Smiling as he gazes down at the Danish Prince's passed out countenance; the more pleasant bigger younger brother thug carefully undresses and positions Hans supine on the medical cot to examine him more closely.

Bruiser then elevates the operating table beneath the prone man under a series of hand turned gears and ratchets that ingenious blacksmith at-all-things-metal Attila had put together for the medical entrepreneurs' promising self-made new endeavor that benefited them all. Along with Gunther's interior designing skills to make the small tree clinic more homey, the thugs all pitched in to build this ruffian and thug health center of their own.

"I think he looks rich." The old drunk named Shorty had wandered into the surgery, greedily digging through Hans' removed jacket pockets.

"Hands off, Shorty. He's family." Flynn slaps the vertically-challenged old man's gnarled grabbing digits back from purloining the entire expensive velvet fabric Navy blue jacket after Shorty sinks his yellowed, cracked eye-teeth into the Sjoforsvaret uniform's real gold buttons until dollar $ signs pop to his larcenous eyes.

Flynn grabs back the jacket from the dirty old man's paws, shaking his head at the strange, aged creature who was elected by this _hallowed_ group to be Eugene's best man at the wedding five years ago.

"Hey! This is serious. I've seen you guys work miracles hundreds of times! I trust you to save my kid brother's life. My new friend Job, over there too, after you're done with your magic stitches on Hans. Our Caribbean pal is a wee bit sturdier than my emaciated Lillebror. Whew! I've gotta get that boy fattened up!" Eugene's eyes slit in concern as he watches Bruiser gently peel off Hans' inner shirt reveal the all skin and sinewy bone young Dane's deep bloody incision abdominal stab wound.

"The poor kid is too skinny." Vladimir, the biggest gargantuan of all the wide shouldered, well muscled, definitely not 'skinny' gang of the Snuggly Duckling ilk, hunkers down through the doorway to intone.

"We'll take care of that little eating disorder issue when we get him home, with a few pieces of Arianna's famous Schokokuchen mit kirschen!" Flynn Rider blithely speaks of the Queen of Prussia and the high cholesterol, indulgently calorific sponge cake recipe she is always trying to shove down his throat.

"So what happened to him? That's a pretty nasty entrance wound." Killer lifts up his metal helmet from his eyes after giving a bare chested Hans' ragged torrent skin beneath his fourth and fifth left intercoastal space a visual examination.

"Okay guys. Here's the story. It's not exactly my story, but I did play a vital role in making it all come to pass." Flynn takes a deep breath for launching into his tirade before the group of Snuggly Duckling patrons had gathered around him in the clinic's receiving room.

"I got involved – by no choice of my own, mind you me – with a nasty piece of work, a peglegged pirate, who threatened our own King Fritz and Queen Arianna's lives unless I did a tiny, trifling, trivial pinch for him. So as any good thief among us would – I agreed. Little did I know that this guy here – _seems I was his father's, the Royal King of Denmark's, long-lost illegitimate bastard. It's okay, you don't have to bow_ –my lil' bro, after being disowned and disinherited himself for what I hear were some unsavory personal romantic dealings with our beauteous Norwegian Princess neighbors in the north _,_ was sentenced by his, and my – _hold onto your seats now_ – twelve other big brothers. Consequently, Hans was sentenced and sold to the said evil pirate on his ship as galley cook, clean up between decks boy, and all around kicked down slave. No wonder he was in this sad state when we found him."

Without missing a tick, Flynn takes in a big gulp of breath, battering pub thug Fang's ratty claws away from making off with passed out Hans' fancy belt and sheathed naval sword. Flynn then himself pats the poor hard-breathing guy's bony arm when Bruiser goes to work on him.

"Long story short, we got caught up in grave digging, kidnapping, plunging from a thousand plus foot mountain peak all in the old madman's whacko quest for a holy orb's miraculous healing spring water legend. And when we finally found it – along with the believed drowned King and Queen of Norway, my icy uncle and lovely aunt – it rejected his dirty black soul and turned him into a huge sea monster that we all had to risk life and limb _– this one nearly amputated for the bullet embedded in it still that I took to save a little girl._ _I'll have you guys check up on it at a later date for a nominal fee, since my brilliant kid brother already did an initial on-site triage._ " Eugene has to pause here to swallow, every one of the pub thugs raptly listening with baited breath and slack jaws to his far-flung adventurous tale.

"Oh, and our steamship almost got us sucked down the Moskenstraumen maelstrom after being swatted out of the sky in our magic sky carriage. But we had Snow and Ice Queens, flying reindeer and horses, an ice-powered Norwegian King come back to life from the dead, a Nature whispering ghost guy and his son who shoots a mean bow and arrow, talking whales and seals and bears to help take down the enormously hideous monster. Whew! How is that for a two-week reconciliation getaway for me and my gorgeous bride!?" Eugene finishes his well spun, but factual, tale spit out with a flourish in a matter of a minute or two.

Flynn Rider was speaking to a stunned silent crowd by now. In silent applause, Ulf the pantomime, cupping a white gloved hand over his 'O' circular mouth, was the first to recover as the obese theatrical actor mutely mimicked Flynn's every creative word before each one of the gathered around thug's astounded faces. They were all sitting on the ground or leaning against the clinic's walls to hear all the adventure that transpired in their thieving 'friend's' and his pretty princess' absence from dull old Corona.

"Now, are you all gonna just stand there catching flies? Or are you going to help my Lillebror and our new Caribbean pal who was the pirate's former first mate? Good Ol' Job had turned on the vicious, wicked pegleg and came to the side of right as a hero just when we needed him. He even saved Rapunzel from drowning in that maelstrom in the end. So I personally owe Job here a gratitude I can never repay." Before all their empathically shocked eyes, Flynn chokes up a bit on those last words in that touchy-feely manner the blasé man claimed to never resort to.

The Snuggly Duckling patrons, though rough, tough and tumble on the outside, really were a bunch of goodhearted blokes and dear friends to Rapunzel. Her first friends in fact, because the sheltered girl was brave enough to believe in her dream – and all of theirs, too – after being secluded in that tall tower for the whole of her lifetime.

And if this guy was friend to Princess Rapunzel, then he was a friend of theirs now, too.

"Gotta say I was impressed when my brother Hans here, after being half frozen by the woman he loved, was still able to skewer the hundred foot tall sea monster with the ship's mast and bring it down. But after that, that scum of the earth, vengeful pegleg who just wouldn't die, cruelly knifed the Kid in the back. _That rotten piece of one-legged garbage_ _scheiße_ – no offense to disabled folks as a whole, Hookie. But you could've warned me better of that Captain Cornelius Jol's streak of insanity." A swearing foully Flynn passes the blame around as he directs his heavy eyelids to the hook handed former seaman present who played the piano at his Royal wedding.

"None taken, Rider. But the boys here are witnesses that I told you NOT get involved with that crazy old nut Houtebeen! But did you listen to me? Nah! You're just too smart aleck clever to listen to reason or ask the authorities for help, Thief! You didn't even have the courtesy to tell your sweet wife! It broke our hearts to see poor Rapunzel mooning about over you for months!" Hookhand sinks his metal appendage into the pile of neatly stacked pages on the desk filing cabinet until they were all skewered onto his sharp claw for threatening effect.

"No violence or harsh words in the doctor's office, please, gentleman. They disrupt the peaceful atmosphere of healing." Sweet voiced Bruiser gently berates ill tempered Hookhand and arm-crossed, challenging Flynn for raising the tensed voices in his tranquil abode.

The large bodied former criminal turned physician points a thick finger upward to the new sampler sign above both their heads as he pushes Eugene and Hookhand cheek to cheek together.

The daintily yarn knit and embroidered sign read: _'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth'_ in beatified flowery wisdom.

"R-right. Sorry, but my nerves are frayed for this guy." Eugene smirks self-consciously at the doctor's insinuation. An incited Hookhand merely scoffs and backs away from the confrontational scene. The goodhearted blowhard leans against the clinic wall of the knobbly trunk section of the big white oak the office had been carved into.

"…Elsa… Elsa! I'm so hot… Elsa… Please…Hold me…" As a feverish Hans' delirious breath succumbs to the nitrous oxide laughing gas that Killer was applying to numb him to an insensate state, the Dane murmurs out the longing words as an empty hand reaches out for his invisible love's touch.

"Is this 'Elsa' the boy's Mama?" Between the way Eugene spoke and treated Hans as a 'Kid' and the Danish Prince's thin, gangly body form, Bruiser considered Hans still young enough to be calling out for the warmth of his mother's embrace in times of trouble. Bruiser presses an ether-soaked sponge to Hans' admirable nose to compassionately comatose him.

"Nah. She's his girl." Eugene answers with an honest smile down as Hans' verdant green eyes flutter closed with an evident longing in them, intermingled with pain.

"Ah, his Ice Queen. That's nice." Quietly listening to Eugene's discombobulated yet thrilling story earlier, the romantic in Big Nose answers as he helps bring a stumbling, yet stable Job into the small clinic's overfilled waiting room.

"Good kid, huh?" Simmered down Hookhand, who knew his share about annoying little brothers, inquires as Eugene's usually unfazed eyes tremble a bit to watch Hans' struggle for breath be put under the anesthetic effects of 'sweet oil of vitriol' a.k.a. ether.

"The best. I didn't realize until now that I could care so damn much about another fella like this…Strictly _brotherly_ _love_ like the Good Book says, though. Let's get that absolutely straight, boys! A man has his reputation to watch out for! Especially when his wife's away in a foreign country…" An embarrassed Flynn brushes his errant bangs back from his forehead.

"See, admitting this touchy-feely stuff just isn't me." A flustered Eugene blushes as Hookhand and the other Snuggly Duckling thugs snicker at his queasiness with tender emotions.

Gathering equipment, Bruiser scrubs up to his bulging biceps as Killer sterilizes the scissors he pulls from his chest utility belt, along with more than a few large choice needles stuck in his metal helmet.

"So how's the prognosis looking, Docs? I never had a little brother before, so I hope you guys can pull him through all right in one piece! Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's with all those sharp unsightly and dangerous objects you're floating around him?! Aren't you just gonna, you know, stitch him up?"

 _GULP!_ Flynn's expressive language extends to his terrified eyes that connect with both of the doctors sharpening their knives and scissors over Hans' abdomen that Killer had bafflingly just shaved clean of any extemporaneous body hair.

"Please go sit and rest in the waiting room, Prince Eugene. There is a lot of exploratory surgery we must do to ensure the subcutaneous depth beneath the underlying fascia. There could be further complication if the initial knife stab hemorrhaged into a hollow perforation of any viscous organ beneath the peritoneum or intercoastal muscle. That could thusly cause a fatal hernia, if left unchecked." Though raw honesty in medical terms right now may not have been the best medicine for Eugene, loquacious Bruiser was well studied in this area for the hundreds of similar serious cases he made his business to learn all the medical procedures during his last stint behind bars in prison.

"Showoff." Killer rolls his eyes. As he finishes sharpening his steely knives together, the sartor loads suture from thread spools in several of the sterilized needles that had resided in his helmet. He was less the brainy book-learned surgeon and more a sadistic hands-on precision-skilled-at-bloodletting master with the scalpel and razor-sharp multiple scissors that constantly accessorized his fashion.

"That's extremely reassuring." In a high pitched leggiero, Eugene gulps again so hard that his large Adam's apple was sent on a roller coaster ride of wobbling after hearing the two coldblooded brothers' operational descriptives, audio and visual.

"I think you're not too good with blood, either. Like me, Eugene. Let's get you out of here, before we got another patient and no more beds." Disgusting blighter Big Nose teases as he cuffs Eugene around the collar and begins to drag him out the surgery.

"Just be careful with my little brother, fellas. That boy is to be the royal property of the Queen of Norway someday. So I'd make sure to optimize the cosmetic results of his – ehem – privately viewed wares, if you going anywheres near there. I'd be real careful, if I were you guys." Flynn warns as he is ushered out of their surgery into the attached waiting room by Big Nose. Hookhand and Attila remain behind as assistant nurses to help Killer and Bruiser float between performing surgery on Hans' thoracoabdominal zone in stab wound exploration and Job's localized anesthesia and suturing on the secondary sickbed beside the Danish Prince.

"We took care of your horses outside, Rider. I gave them each a proper rub-down, then watered and fed them good oats. They are beauties. But a little flighty." Horse lover Vladimir, the biggest gargantuan of all the wide shouldered, well muscled bunch of Snuggly Duckling attendees, was the one who first helped the stumbling dark man to the secondary patient operating table.

"You know, Vlad old buddy, that's because them horsies can fly. Why don't you take one of them around for a sunset test spin while we're awaiting the surgery? I reckon a flying Pegasus is almost second best to one of your beloved unicorns." A grateful Eugene offers the fantasy ride of a lifetime to the man whose dream could only collect dust before this chance with a wry smile.

Without a word, the gleaming eyed elation showed in the normally sullen giant's missing toothy grin as he charges out to play with the every bit as delicate as his cherished ceramic statues of mythical horsies.

"And don't any of you crooks be thinking of making that sheep into mutton pies! That ball of wool is Blondie's new pet!" Eugene calls out the 'treehouse' door when he sees the gaggle of thugs poking and prodding as they surrounded his traveling zoo near the stream. Then Flynn turns back to the voice calling him to 'Leave You in Stitches' reception desk.

"So, what type of payment will we be expecting from you today, Master Rider? Cash or credit?" Shorty, the endlessly drunken elderly man who was employed to the clinic as receptionist/accountant, leans over the front room's death with his gnarled hands stuck out towards Flynn.

"For Pete's sake, Shorty! My Lillebror's still under the surgeon's knife in there! Can't it wait?! Besides, I'm a little short on funds here since my harrowing journey! You know I'm good for it!" Flynn adroitly makes excuses as he sticks his hand into his pants pocket that was virtually empty save for some ship ratline twine, that dang pair of handcuffs that had ripped up his still excoriated wrists and beat up chafed knuckles, and the small carving knife Job conferred to him along with his Crucifix Cross.

"We know your _wife_ is good for it, Thief. By the way, where is our little dreamer?" Shorty asks in his rambling droll way over the navy blue piece of fabric he was just bringing an extra pair of Killer's scissors up to.

"Hey! I don't reckon you're bartering in size 'slender' men's naval jackets! That belongs to Vice Admiral Westergaard, I'll have you well know! Awarded to him by the Queen of Norway herself. Give me that, you two-bit thief! You and your beer belly would never fit in it anyway, Shrimp!" Flynn proudly reaches a long arm over the reception desk counter to reclaim Hans' swiped, gold buttoned, fancy decorated jacket out from the old geezer's grasping hands. But those gnarled digits don't so easily let go.

As Flynn and Shorty have a tug-of-war skirmish over the article of stolen clothing, the younger man finally pulls so forcefully that the dark blue velvet, maroon trimmed jacket is forcefully wrenched from the gray-white bearded short man's knobbly fingers.

Eugene, Shorty and Big Nose, who was trying to break up the face pushed in struggling pair of sticky fingered thieves, all watch in gape-mouth surprised. When, out of some hidden inside, inside pocket within Hans' naval jacket, as its fabric was being strained and stretched in every fought-over direction, a singular silvery object flies out and goes zinging through the doctor's office still air.

"What the –?!" Eugene halts his swearing under Bruiser's knit sampler that was framed on the reception desk depicting Noah's Ark and its line of creatures of all shapes and sizes walking side-by-side peacefully under the Promise of a rainbow…

 _A promise_ … Luckily, Flynn Rider still had the fastest fingers in Europe's West as he beats all of the pub thugs that come out of the woodwork with their clammy fingers to make a dive for the silver, blue-and-white bejeweled band that had been for who knows how long obscured in the secret folds of Hans Westergaard's naval jacket.

As a triumphant Flynn holds up the shimmery silver, diamond white and blue topaz delicate ring set in a snowflake starburst pendant shape, he instantly knew what it signified.

"Oh! Isn't that the most exquisite engagement ring you've ever seen?! Those gemstones are genuine as all get out! And believe me, I know. I've seen some beauties in my time in the family business. That is, before I went clean." The Big Nose-d reformed criminal had a keen eye for the custom jewelry his Prussian Jewry family business specialized in. He could easily see, even without his carat magnification tools, the clarity and purity of the beautifully set, elegant ring that was so sentimentally schmaltzy. After all, the romantic man had been hunting for one just as perfectly suited to his new bride-to-be too.

"Hmph! You sly dog, you! Whew!" Eugene whistles under his breath with a quirky smirk as he stares at the obviously personalized snowflake setting of the flawless piece of jewelry.

 _Rapunzel and I both suspected you and Queenie were a hot ticket item, despite both of you crazy kids trying to trick us into thinking not! So, you have been planning to pop the question to Queenie for how long? Look, there was absolutely no opportunity for you to purchase such a superb engagement band as this in the rural country parts we were traveling through. So how long have you been in love with that blonde beauty from afar, Handsome?_

 _Geez! Never seen two kids so mixed up about such an obvious thing! After all this pining, heart-on-sleeve, ring hiding in special secret hidden pockets stuff – you_ _are_ _going to make it back to her, Good-Lookin! And I'm going to make sure that you will put this on your icy beauty's deserving ring finger, Mister! If your big brother has to whack you silly until you snap out of the self chivalrous funk you always slip into, rich boy! Just be a human man for once in your life!_

Eugene peeks his amber-gold eyes through the open surgery door when Attila scurries out to fetch some more clean bandages. Eugene glimpses where Killer and Bruiser were clamping Hans' incision in a laparatory incision into his peeled back at sliced open fibrous tissue that they had been, layer by layer, now expertly stitching back together.

 _Please, get him through this, Lord. He's got a good lady's heart on the ropes too. Me and my baby-carrying missus and I will take care of the rest. You can count on us old married matchmakers to do our best to bring those starcrossed lovers together, Big Guy. And I'll attend Church every damn Sunday the rest of my days with the wife's family in_ _Corona_ _, I promise._

Eugene's pledging, deal-making eyes dance as the last rays of the late summer sunset glimmer through the white oak hollowed out tree window opening to catch the glistening beams reflect on the pure blue topaz of Hans' concealed engagement ring. Flynn holds it up to the fleeting light with a proud smile, knowing both the stubborn parties involved and their reaction if this was revealed, before squirreling it back into the sanctity of its hidden secret pocket within a hidden secret pocket that had been so carefully sewn into the inner breast lining of Hans' velvet blue Sjoforsvaret jacket.

"You really do know how to keep backstory secrets, kid. Gotta ween you off that bad habit that seems to run in the blood." Flynn self analyzes as he sits on the waiting room bench. He begins to carefully carve at the Christlike figure on the wooden cross Job had entrusted to him. After all, not only did the noble, holy task calm his nerves, but the generous pastime gave Eugene a chance to rein in his scattered thoughts.

Seated there in the outpatients bench, the ample yarn decorated pillow cushions that Bruiser had knit and placed to line all the clinic bench catch Eugene's eye.

He glances up to read in all calming, blue lavender embroidered letters the Psalmist's 23rd passage from the Luther Bible published in 1545 on the couch cushions of the bench he was seated and carving upon.

'Der HERR ist mein Hirte; mir wird nichts mangeln.

Er weidet mich auf grüner Aue und führet mich zum frischen Wasser.

Er erquicket meine Seele; er führet mich auf rechter Straße um seines Namens willen.

Und ob ich schon wanderte im finstern Tal, fürchte ich kein Unglück; denn du bist bei mir, dein Stecken und dein Stab trösten mich.

Du bereitest vor mir einen Tisch im Angesicht meiner Feinde. Du salbest mein Haupt mit Öl und schenkest mir voll ein.

Gutes und Barmherzigkeit werden mir folgen mein Leben lang, und ich werde bleiben im Hause des HERRN immerdar.

Amen.'

 _'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want._

 _He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters._

 _He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake._

 _Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me._

 _Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over._

 _Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.  
Amen.'_

With that hopefully appropriate prayer in mind, Eugene's doleful eyes gaze towards the surgery door were Killer and Bruiser were stitching Hans with so many carefully placed layered sutures that it could, no doubt, take hours. Many of the other pub thugs had already departed to their rooms at the Snuggly Duckling loft just a hop skip and a throw away.

With Hans' Naval jacket, sword and belt securely tucked beneath his arm as he pauses in the entranceway at the clinic's surgery, Flynn looks in on the labor-intensive operation.

"This might take a while, Prince Eugene. You look tired after your long journey. You may wish to take a rest in the Snuggly Duckling's upper rooms while you wait. I can assure you that there is no trace of septicemia for peritonitis in your brother. I believe it's chiefly due to that natural salve that you applied at the first critical juncture. I must get that tincture's formula." Bruiser says when he spies Flynn looking anxious in the doorway.

"Really? You sure the kid's gonna be all right? That's a relief! And my pal Job there is the man to talk to about that magic blood clotting herbal mix. Make sure you take good care of him too, all right? Money is no object for these heroic fellas' recovery. That guy put his life on the line for Rapunzel and I'll never forget it." Eugene allows himself a genuine smile. "I'll be back after I secure some lodgings with the SD innkeeper."

"Yes, absolutely! Your friend Job is doing well! He's already coming back to consciousness. That big man must have quite a constitution to not succumb to the ether for long. Killer is stitching him up as we speak. He is a quiet big man, but his eyes are kind. We will give him my finest service, rest assured. And will be working on your little brother for a time more, but he's responding well too, so far." Bruiser answers as he hurries back to his work.

Work–in-progress Crucifix in hand that he flashes to show a woozy Job as he departs with a smile, Eugene, with Big Nose at his side, begins to walk out the entranceway of the clinic's hallowed out oak tree, moving towards where a crooked sign swaying in the rustling cool sunset breeze. Eugene watches the large bulbous nose, hopeless romantic pause to pick some wildflowers and breathe in their sweet scent of the forest's summer offering as the two stroll beside the beautiful waterfall and its connected riverbed's babbling stream.

"Isn't love a beautiful thing? You have to give me some tips on how a good husband should treat his new bride. I would appreciate it from an experienced, happily married, good husband such as you are, Prince Eugene." Big Nose asks as he walks beside Flynn on the path leading to the Snuggly Duckling.

"A good husband…" Eugene thoughtfully reminisces that first time when he brought Rapunzel through this maze of the Dancing Forest rich in wildlife and full of twisted trees in convoluted spirals bent to the ground. The long winding path that led to the Snuggly Duckling Tavern where the thief had tried to discourage the girl he had just met from her pure purpose was now gleaming in the final sunset rays as he walks down memory lane.

Sunlit big dreams such as hers could not be trounced down by a jaded man's dampening bucket of cold water. And the patrons of the Snuggly Duckling each responded, appreciating that her dream proved that theirs was a common goal that they all could keep reaching for together.

"I miss you and those big dreams, Liebling. All I can hope is that you and that new dream of ours are doing well, my Brownie girl." Eugene's mind wanders to his absent love as he walks the road they once walked together, even as Big Nose drawls on and on about his enthusiasm for his happy day in the morn.

"Come on, Flynn! I'll get you a good room next to mine so we can discuss married life and the joys of husbandhood all night! Killer and Bruiser expertly took care of my little goiter nodule problem last night as an early present for my wedding to my Hilde tomorrow. So no worries about your little brother! Those guys are great! Let's eat, drink, and be married in the morning!" Friendly Big Nose sings a silly, merry tune as he puts an arm around the weirded-out Flynn's squeezed shoulder in camaraderie.

 _Yup. Weddings are happy days._ Flynn Rider allows himself to sentimentally touch the still wriggling Snuggly Duckling's dangling sign that was every bit as rickety and hole-y as that memorable day five years ago when he and Rapunzel first darkened its doors as a single strangers.

With a smirk, Eugene throws open the pub's door with all the finesse he had expressed back then.

"Garçon! Your finest three beds for three of your finest dashing and daring conquering heroes!" For old times' sake, blustery Flynn Rider announces his arrival to the old pub's fanned out patrons. Their glare up at him did not exactly have the amount of vicious venom, but there was yet an unwelcome amusement for his interrupting their card games and conversations.

Knives, hammers and maces immediately are drawn once again at his handsome face's arrival.

"Oh, there's no place like home sweet home in the bosom of good friends! I missed you guys." A quixotic Eugene murmurs with a silly daffy smirk pasted on his face as the group of Snuggly Ducklings grab hold of his loose body to toss Flynn Rider back-and-forth under fire breathing threats and flying blade darts before they let them down with a mercenary laugh.

And Eugene allows himself the laugh along with his ridiculers as he struts through room of the pub as if he owned the place.

After all, with all the structural improvements and well-paid employment of the former ruffians by the uniquely eccentric royal family itself, that thought wasn't so far out of the Prince consort of Prussia's claim.

* * *

 _Meanwhile, on board the pride of the kingdom's naval fleet, the HmNoS Feia frigate, as it sails southernly homeward bound upon the north_ _Norwegian sea_ _…_

"Elsa? What you doing out here, all by yourself? I've been with Mama, after Papa drifted back to sleep. Olaf's been talking her ear off about everything that's happened since they've been gone! In full embarrassing detail, too!" Effervescent Anna nervously shivers as she tries to strike up conversation with her quiet sister.

All morning into the afternoon, Elsa had been dutifully attending to her semiconscious parent, as Papa had been slipping in and out of an at times feverish, at times frozen cold, sentient state since the royal family had boarded ship.

Now that the weakened Norwegian monarch had finally fallen into a restful repose under his Queen Idun's cautious tender healing ministrations, and Elsa's cool maintained aura from her room next door, Elsa finally slipped away for some time in self reflection after the close of the escapade at last.

"Has he been?" Elsa responds distractedly, her blue eyes entranced upon the cresting sea waves where she stood on the Feia's foredeck starboard stem. She pretends to push her stray bangs back when even unobservant Anna could see that she was wiping the prohibited tears from her eyes.

"Yup! Olaf even resang that troll family ditty all about Kristoff being ' _smelly'_ and ' _gruff'_ and ' _tinkling in the woods'_ … My poor Kristly!" Anna made it her prime goal now to garner a smile from her saddened older sister. Even resorting to using troll-like crass language for normal body functions - that definitely did not fit in Victorian era sensibilities - at the expense of her hunky husband's dignity.

"What _tinkles_ …in the woods, Anna?" Elsa, obviously lost in her own thoughts to this point, was purposely attempting to engage in polite discussion with her bright eyed younger sis, not quite in tune enough to unravel Anna's gauche phrase to catch on.

"Hee hee. You know." The tactless girl with insinuating wicked eyes gestures downward as her orangey head that was whistling back-and-forth enough data she chuckles and giggles with implied revelry at her big sister's artless guilelessness.

"Oh!" Elsa innocently blushes at her taboo gaffe, her cheeks going a lovely shade of rosy pink set against the sunsetting sky.

"You're so pretty, Elsie." Anna pets a caring hand up to her lovely sister's softly alarmed face.

"That's a cow's name." By rote, Elsa repeats the exact same accusatory words she used then when a certain other person called her by that bovine associated nickname.

And in the next moment, the Ice Queen breaks out in hot tears, launching herself into Anna's welcoming arms.

"What happened to him, Anna? What did I do wrong?" The elegant blonde young woman separates herself for a few moments from her constant worry over her ailing parent that she alone must care for, to vent her own distressed heart to the only person who understood everything she was going through.

"Nothing! You did nothing wrong, Elsa. You've been perfect!" Anna consults Elsa with a warm comforting embrace. She was aware that sheltered Elsa knew very little of people relations after the Norwegian Crown Princess had grown up detached and too frightened to face the world at large. Elsa knew even less than Anna when it came to young men in matters of love.

 _'Anna, what do you know of love?'_

 _'More than you!'_ Anna's soul remembers the sisters' tense argumentative confrontation from over two years ago concerning the romantic topic that neither young girl had any real relevant experience with at that point.

And the kicker was, it involved the very same man in question now, too.

"He didn't even say goodbye…" Elsa openly weeps cool iced tears of her greatest fears at not having the ability to live a normal woman's life into Anna's caramel braids.

"I don't know, Elsa. Maybe he doesn't like goodbyes." Anna says offhandedly in her best attempt to sound noncommittal as she looks over her hugged sister's shoulder when she catches a glimpse of a familiar silhouette.

Just then, a yawning Kristoff, just awakened from a nap after being up all night, ambles up the Feia's top deck after trudging down from his warm cabin bed to see to Sven and Svala in the large ship's lower orlop cargo deck where the reindeer were settled for the extended passage.

But one look at the poignant scene of sisterly devotion – not to mention the tears that strong-willed Elsa rarely shed – made the levelheaded mountain man turn on his booted heel to return to the safe solitude of the engine room below.

Anna gives her retreated 'hero' a sourpuss face at being abandoned by her big, strong guy when she could use some extra emotional support.

{"Brave guy."} Anna grumbles and shakes her head at Kristoff's moral cowardice. Sure, he was ace at climbing steep mountains, shooting straight arrows, and lifting up huge chunks of ice, among other things like a real man. But when it came to tackling a woman's tears, her mountain man, Kristoff Bjorgman, was still a little boy.

{"What?"} Kristoff uses his mental link to answer his little wife's demanding eyes as he backtracks and leaves with a sheepish look on his cute blond face.

 _Anyway…_

"I thought Prince Hans cared for me. Maybe I wasn't born to have a real kind of love like you and Kristoff have. After all, nobody could want someone—something—like me." But when Elsa whispers those words in a monotone voice and disillusioned eyes filled with shame, Anna forgoes her own distaste for the Danish Prince to answer honestly her brokenhearted sister's pleas.

"He did, Elsa! I really think he did care…And what do you mean, 'something like you'—you're perfect! Anyone and everyone would want you!" Anna shakes her head and tells all the truth the kind girl felt inside.

She loved Elsa way too much to let her older sister's tentative heart teeter back to shutting itself back out from the world again due to a terrible and incorrect idea of rejection. Especially after Anna glimpsed Hans Westergaard's true soul in that final battle.

The way the Southern Isles Prince wished to sacrifice himself without Elsa ever knowing that it was her ice that would be the ultimate cause of his demise, just to spare his Queen's tender heart, really nailed it home for Anna that Hans had changed. And then, the simple fact that their bond was so great that his iced heart had been thawed, allowing Hans to save their drowning mother's life and subsequently stop the beast with his ingenuity, Anna appreciated all that too.

 _So when it was all over, why did he suddenly leave? Did Prince Hans really consider himself unworthy of Elsa? Was there really nothing left of that former desperate villain she once thought she knew?_

It was Hans' choice, Hans' decision, preferring to hide the facts in secret rather than cause anyone grief for his sake. He made Anna swear to never tell Elsa of the Ice Queen's role in the matter. He defeated the bad guy Houtebeen and brought down the monster, and then as the Gler was steered safely out of the maelstom, Kommander Westergaard of the newly commissioned HmNoS Gler had disappeared without a trace.

And Anna was bent and determined now to find out where that heartbreaking Red got away to.

"Shh. Shh…Don't worry, Elsa. It'll be all right. I know it'll be." The empathic braided girl who loved her sister to tears and truly wanted Elsa's happiness— _even if it meant having Westergaard around, grumble,grumble—_ was at a loss for how to respond.

At the moment, the sisters were needed in Arendelle at their parents' side. So Anna simply hugs her upset sister's trembling body tightly as she could as the wheels and cogs in her mind start to spin.

Gently swaying in time with the ocean waves, Anna begins to hum their favorite childhood _bånsuller –_ lullaby – that their sweet Swedish Mama used to sing them to sleep with when they were wee little girls, humming along. Back from the days when little Anna and Elsa would do everything together as eternal best friends.

"Vårvindar friska leka  
Och viska lunderna kring  
Likt älskande par.  
Strömarna ila,  
Finna ej vila  
Förrän I havet störtvågen far.  
Klaga mitt hjärta,  
Klaga och hör  
Vallhornets klang  
Bland klipporna dör.  
Strömkarlen spelar,  
Sorgerna delar  
Vakan kring berg och dal.

 _Spring blossoms whisper and weave.  
_ _Through the trees green  
_ _and fresh as young lovers be_

 _Streams flow in a hurry,  
No rest or worry  
Until their foam meets the sea._

 _Cry out my heart.  
Cry out and hear  
The herdsman's horn  
First echo, then pale.  
River sprites playing,  
Sorrows dismaying  
As they keep vigil on  
_ _the hill and dale."_

"Ooh! That gives me chills, Anna! I remember your dear Mama rocking you two energetic babes to sleep with that melody, night after night. How the pair of you girls loved to hear her sing those high notes!" Gerda comes scooting up behind the two sisters with that familiar warm, hand-knit shoulder wrap that she placed around each of her charge's shoulders.

"Queen Idun always had the most beautiful spinto soprano voice. Especially when she was singing to her children. How that young queen would dote on you two. And when your Papa stopped in and added his deep dramatic baritone to her lullaby, it was like hearing music straight from Heaven." The plump woman ushers Elsa and Anna in from the darkening sky atop the frigate's open deck to come down below.

"It's been a long day for you two young ladies. Off to bed for you both after you say good night to your parents. I've fixed you up a beautiful cabin room down below deck. Kai thought it would be best if you share a bed together. Just like old times. Won't that be fun?" Sunshiny Gerda, as she always has, tries to put on a cheerful face, though she understood how harsh the bedroom separation her husband Kai was enforcing for Anna and her new mate was to not upset the King.

"Yep! You can put your cold feet on me in the middle of the night, Elsa! Like you used to!" Anna too puts a good spin on it. After all, spending quality time with her sister was every bit as important. Or maybe even more so for Elsa at this fragile juncture.

"Come, take Olaf off your sweet Mama's hands so she can get some sleep too, now that your father has dropped off. While our Idun does enjoy Olaf's chatting company, goodness knows the poor woman could use a good peaceful rest after her long ordeal. God bless her sainted, long-suffering soul." The plump-cheeked and pleasant, older woman directs the Arendelle sisters down towards the Feia's state quarters where the King and Queen of Norway were currently residing.

"We'll make it through this, because we're best friends forever, Elsa! It'll turn out all right. Just trust me, okay?" Anna gives all her loving support and squeezed hand to her sister as she pulls Elsa across the main deck and down the companionway steps.

The trio passes Kai in the ship's waist corridor where he was delivering some milk of magnesia seasick stomach powders at a bilious Rapunzel's door. A pukey green colored Pascal picks up the packet to mix the dosage for his nauseated poorly girl, who quickly must make a dashed run back from the door to the already many times used basin bowl at her bedside stand.

"Oh dear. Good night, cousin Rapunzel." Deflated from her ready question, Elsa must restrain herself from going in and asking the sickly pregnant woman the whereabouts of her husband Eugene or any questions of the other man who had mysteriously gone missing from the Gler after the final battle.

"Feel better, 'Punzy." Commiserating Anna grimaces at the seasick/morning sick expectant young mother's pallid woes as her healthy younger cousin wiggles her fingers at a weak from convulsing Rapunzel in a friendly wave.

The nauseated cocoa brown haired Prussian Princess could barely wave her queasy hand back at them as Kai swiftly closes the door to give the qualmish, nauseous Corona Princess some dignified privacy.

A little ways more down to the Feia's Royal stateroom, the girls quietly tromp forward behind their lifelong nanny/cook/friend as Gerda carefully opens the door as not to make too much noise should the injured King inside be disturbed as he was under the influence of his wife's tender healing lullaby.

Elsa had maintained the chilled temperature inside the royal couple's stateroom in an early attempt at air-conditioning for her recuperating father all the while.

But instead of hearing Queen Idun, who was content to be all wrapped in a sweater at her husband's side, their beloved Mama's lovely spinto soprano strains were replaced in their ears by something quite different indeed.

" _Spring blossoms whisper and weave.  
_ _Through the trees now green  
_ _and fresh as young lovers be…"_

Olaf's warbling voice was quietly humming the same old Swedish lullaby that Anna was singing before just moments ago. And though the happy snowman was by no means hitting the high C's involved in the soaring melody that was written for a feminine soprano's voice, he captured tender rhythm's undercurrent of caring devotion and soothing constancy of familial fondness within the lullaby precious sweet lyrics nonetheless.

Obviously Queen Idun had taught the observant eager snow creation the favorite Swedish lullaby up her _b_ _å_ _ns_ – her children – that she sentimentally was humming in tune to her vulnerable love. After all, it was Agdar who gave her, through his love, those two precious bundles of God's wondrous gifts of life named Elsa and Anna whom Idun would be forever grateful for.

The exhausted Queen, body mind and soul, had finally relented her unrelinquishing spirit to allow herself some repose upon her frosty darling min alskare's pale bluish tinted, yet solidly breathing, neither too feverish nor too icy cold, chest in one another's embrace on the comfortable plush bed the royal couple finally could share after five long and hard years of un-restful torment.

" _Streams flow in a hurry, No rest or worry. Until their foam meets the sea."_ Musically icicle-eared Olaf's motivated songful voice drones on the instantly picked up song.

But when Olaf's single warble is added to by a pair of golden melodious, sure throated songbirds in harmonized unison, chirping in enthusiastically, solo Swedish lullaby is enhanced the lovely lilting beauty it deserved.

 _"Cry out my heart.  
Cry out and hear  
The herdsman's horn  
First echo, then pale.  
River sprites playing,  
Sorrows dismaying  
They keep vigil on  
_ _the hill and dale."_

As sweet, warm and bright, full timbred lyric soprano Anna takes the soaring high notes while dramatic coloratura Elsa harmonizes with her great flexibility and sustaining power's dramatic tessitura range, the lovely lullaby of the girls' childhood that brings the pair hugging one another as they serenade their weary – _yet alive!_ – parents with emotional tears of joy.

Queen Idun and King Agdar's eyes flutter open briefly with smiles on their lips, as Elsa and Anna both in turns bestow kisses on their cutely slumbering parents in each other's loving embrace.

An absolute serene feeling of tranquility together ties Arendelle's Bernadotte family together now far closer than they've ever been before. The gratitude to God above, from their once broken hearts, gives Elsa and Anna both the fortitude to push aside their fears of yesterday and worries for tomorrow for just a little while of humble prayerful grace as they stand hand-in-hand, arm in arm, with voices intermingled in glorious song as they watch over the peaceful faces of their beloved parents returned to their lonely world…

* * *

 _Schokokuchen mit kirschen -_ a German sponge cake that's not too sweet with groundnuts, chocolate chips, fruit, lemon peel, cinnamon and not too sweetened whipped cream as frosting.

 _leggiero_ \- Italian for Light-lyric tenor. The high pitched voice has an upper extension of high notes and a lightness of quality that allows for rapid passagework and florid ornamentation.

 _dramatic Baritone_ – deep singing voice that's powerful, full and imposing

 _Bånsuller_ – lullabies or cradle songs in Swedish

 _Vårvindar friska_ "- ("Spring Breezes Whisper and Weave") Swedish lullaby, written in 1815

 _min alskare –_ my darling in Swedish

 _tessitura_ – range of notes for vocals in Italian

 _coloratura soprano_ – agile singing voice in the higher upper extension, capable of fast vocal coloration and great dramatic flexibility in high velocity passages with great sustaining power (Elsa)

 _lyric sopano_ – warm singing voice with bright full timbre, able to be heard over an orchestra. Higher tessitura than soubrette ingénue with youthful quality (Anna)

 _spinto soprano_ – sweet brightness and height light lyric soprano, but can be pushed to full dramatic ranges without strain and may have a sometimes darker timbre (Queen Idun)

 _soubrette soprano –_ Light, fresh voice with sweet timbre, mid-range tessitura, with a lighter vocal weight than other sopranos. (Rapunzel)

* * *

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Did you enjoy our romp into the Snuggly Duckling? ^_^ Its pub thugs are really an entertaining bunch, aren't they? And full of secret talents, too! But they still have it in for Flynn! They're good guys, helping out with Hans! ^_^ And our Eugene is a gem! (Like the beauties set in that hidden engagement ring squirreled away in Kmdr. Westergaard's Naval jacket)

Ah, Hans...Elsa's pining away for you...Wonder what sweet sister Anna is planning in her spinning head...As the melodic sisters serenade their returned parents on the trip home to Arendelle...

God bless! Review your thoughts on our newest guest stars, please!

HarukaKou


	3. Chapter 3 - The Same Old Song and Dance

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Chapter 3**

 **Act V**

 **"The Same Old Song and Dance"**

After another full day of high speed, full knot ahead steering, the modernized multiple engines of the HmNoS Feia had swiftly, and uneventfully carried the ship across the Norwegian Sea, until it had traveled its steam-powered way into the Skaggerak Straits.

To Queen Elsa's crystalline blue longing eyes, that meant that she and her family were almost home.

Now as for Princess Anna, the sleepy eyed girl had tried to wake up at the crack of dawn too, but her eyelids were too darn heavy. It took Gerda's physical tugging of the drowsy girl into her frock and brushing her errant hair down from its wild frizz for the spinning top named Anna to get her engines fully revved. The caramel braided gal had then dashed from their shared cabin room to catch up to Elsa, who left quite early in the morning to greet the day.

Several minutes later, she finally skittered across the top deck of the Feia to meet with her more dignified, standing poised and elegant, older sibling.

"Isn't this exciting, Elsa? What will everybody say when they see Papa and Mama?! Won't they go nuts?! I bet they'll want to throw a huge party, and a ball and so many events to meet their missing King and Queen again!" Anna was so thrilled she was all a-tremble as she finishes re-braiding her bed-mussed hair. The young girl reaches a hand out to grab her surprised elder sister's loose appendage from behind.

"But I don't intend to inform the citizens of Arendelle just yet. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Anna." The cool Queen of Arendelle attempts to soften her definitive declaration with a warm disarming smile and squeeze back to her little sister's hand.

"Why not?" Curious as a kitten but lazy as a cat, Anna stifles a yawn, hugging Elsa's arm. Anna leans her sleepy head on her sister's royal purple velveteen jacket shoulder while the Feia pulls into the familiar view of Arendelle's docking wharf area.

"Kai and I have already discussed this at length. He believes, as do I, that Papa's tentative health will not benefit from an overwhelming welcome home celebration. At least, for the time being. Kai also agrees with the Snow Queen's recommendation for me to take Papa up to the Ice Palace's cold environment in the North Mountain where he can more slowly, in his own time and on his own terms, adjust into his developed ice powers." The platinum blonde young monarch takes her responsibility to her parents and her nation extremely seriously as she gazes towards her proud kingdom that was looming closer ahead. At the same time she cogently explains to Anna of the ultimate decision that she and her chief advisor, Minister Kai, had earnest deliberations over on board the journey here.

"Oh! Family vacation time in the North Mountain together?! That sounds like so much fun! I know you'll be able to make Papa better up there in the Ice Castle! We can play snowgie bowling with Kristoff and Olaf. And I'm sure Marshmallow would love to meet Mama and Papa! We'll have to stop in Arendelle to pick up Eliana and some winter clothes. It gets mighty cold up there, even in summertime, and Mama might want to fetch some of her pretty coats and shawls and warmer bedding. Good thing Gerda kept their room intact all these years! I can't wait to see Mama back in the Castle in that lilac purple nightie when she would always sweep across the floor singing us lullabies 'good night'–" Half asleep, half fantasizing in a childlike dreamworld, baby-of-the-family Anna rattles off her daydreams enthusiastically, in no particular order, as she starts to hum and sway, pressed against Elsa's shoulder with her eyes closed in a quixotic daze.

"Oh, Anna. Thank goodness, Kristoff!" Elsa beckons with a relieved smile to her flighty younger sister's stable rock who just happened to appear on the top deck nearby.

"We've been gone so long from our people already – over twenty days now – and we may be away in the North Mountain for quite a long time before Papa's truly ready to safely return to Arendelle. Kai and Gerda believe it best that they remain at Papa and Mama's side in these first difficult weeks readjusting. And I imagined that perhaps, you and Kristoff could stay on and take care of Arendelle in my place, until we get this all settled."

Elsa lets out a long sigh after finally revealing what she and Kai and Gerda had been evaluating for the past few days of sea travel in secret. It's not that she didn't trust Anna and her new husband to run the kingdom – though High Counselor Kai had his doubts, that sweet trusting Gerda quickly quenched – but Elsa knew how her clingy little sis would react to this proposed separation when Anna had her hopes up so high to be together as a family again..

"What?! Be separated from you and Mama and Papa when we just got them back?! Are you kidding me?!" Anna, as expected, explodes in an almost indignant disdain. The sheer look of pure incredulity on her screwed-up, cute features showed all she felt about the situation as Anna takes a disbelieving step backwards.

Elsa glances around for Kristoff to come bounding over at his new bride's obvious displeasure. He mentally caught enough of the conversation, as heard on the wind he commanded, to get a whiff of what was going on.

{"Anna. Calm down."} The sensible and rational Ice Harvester tries to employ his soothing influence over his Feistypants girl. For both he and Elsa knew Anna well enough by now to know that she was about to self-destruct, and each hold a breath before the big bang exploded…

But just when the orangey firebrand's puckered lips and scrunched up nose on her red face appeared about to literally pop, Anna takes a deep sigh, looks down, and closes her eyes.

"I'm okay with that."

When her countenance was visible again, it was as if the storm cloud had inexplicably passed.

The pleasant smile that totally replaced the angry vexation of moments ago took Elsa completely by surprise. The Norwegian Head of State was already gritting her pretty little white teeth together to prepare herself for Anna's explosive impact, as was Kristoff.

With a confused glance up at the tall shrugging mountain man when none comes, Elsa lets out a deep sigh and small chuckle.

"Then, it's fine with you and Kristoff to stay in Arendelle for a little time, while Mama, Papa and I stay up in the North Mountain?" Elsa asks again, just to be certain of how mature Anna was taking this.

"If it's good with you, Kristly, it's good with me, Elsa. Right?" Anna precious pasted smile did not deceive her guy one bit though.

{"Anna? What are you up to? I would've thought you would want to follow your parents wherever they – ouch!"} With the psychic question, Kristoff eyes Anna suspiciously, about to verbally express his own unease with that outlandish idea of familial separation when his wife's little feet kick his big shins.

"All right! All right! We'll do it!" The tall muscular man leans over to rub his lifted up aching shinbone as he wholeheartedly agrees to whatever his changeable petite bride had planned for them in the near future, no questions asked.

"Good…" Elsa, although feeling a bit weirded out by that funny turnaround exchange, was relieved to be leaving Arendelle in…capable hands…

In her own, Minister Kai's and her Papa's absence from the kingdom.

Well, at least levelheaded Kristoff would be there to advise Anna. Between the two of them, Elsa would have no worry. She hoped.

"After a small rest, while Kai and Gerda acquire some supplies, along with willing servants to accompany our journey to the North Mountain, by this afternoon, I hope to set off with Papa and Mama to the Ice Palace. Once there, Papa can be free to stabilize his cryokinetic abilities, without fear of endangering Arendelle or her people while he becomes accustomed to controlling his ice there." Uniquely understanding that exact sentiment of helplessness and need to protect others from oneself, Elsa explains their itinerary to a raptly listening Anna.

"Sounds okey-dokey to me."

With clandestine ulterior motive, the perky younger girl continues to force a smile as the Feia docks into Arendelle harbor. As soon as the gangplank is lowered, a green gilled Rapunzel and fanning tail Pascal hurriedly were the first to escape the sea vessel and run to Arendelle's familiar shore.

Kai and Gerda escort their returned rulers, with Papa secretly obscured in the dawn's early light upon a stretcher carried down the gangplank and into Arendelle Castle's back rear entrance without any unnecessary fanfare.

With the precious cargo that the Navy men on board the battleship had been sworn to secrecy thereof, Elsa, bids the ship's Kommander fair sailing. Then, she and Anna, with Kristoff, Sven, Svala, and Olaf in tow, step foot back on Arendelle soil.

 _…Welcome home…_

Even the wind seemed to whisper a sentimental greeting to the weary travelers, who've returned after much trial and strife, by the grace of God...

* * *

 _Miles and miles southward, in the still deep of the night…_

There was usually nothing really still about a night spent in the loft inn quarters of a tavern. But with one of the Snuggly Duckling prime members having an important appointment in the morn, Flynn Rider could be at least content that the constantly raucous crowd had quieted to afford the Big Nose-d groom at least one decent night' asleep.

Although, the cacophony noises of loud snoring, wheezing, hacking up and the general disruptive sounds that filled an establishment that housed over a dozen unkempt, unrefined, and unsavory gents who haunted a public drinking house, could keep a cat awake.

A _cat_ _burglar_ anyway, whose heightened senses had the worry of his little brother and his new friend Job's recovery on his mind, not to mention the painful distance between he and his true love, so far away.

In the bright moonlight, unable to sleep for more than a half-hour or so himself, Eugene Fitzherbert stretches up from his small 'choice' bed in the 'finest room' of the Snuggly Duckling – namely the cramped attic loft where three dusty scant cots had been reserved for he and his two companions. He bangs his already raw knuckles against the unfinished splintering wood slats of the vaulted roof as he does.

"Damn it!" Flynn stifles his own cursing mouth with his other working hand that bites in to keep the silent restful night in some semblance of its disagreeable discordance.

Fortunately, none of the other occupants of the loft were awakened. Eugene pauses to look down first at Job's yet sleeping dark face, and then on his younger brother's peacefully slumbering features. Hans had not awakened from the heavy sedation that Drs. Bruiser and Killer had put him under for the operation.

Which Hans seemed to uphold through with flying colors, as the 'Leave You in Stitches' 99% success rate indeed lived up to its hype.

Eugene lightly brushes the Danish Prince's forehead to check for the fever that was now thankfully nonexistent. Lifting the thin sheet covering Hans, Eugene's eyes peek in the dim light at his Lillebror's exposed chest and gut area where the surgical operation took place. The doctors had given the all clear and Eugene was glad to see that Hans was no longer profusely bleeding. The site wound was not red nor infected looking at all, with a perfectly executed neat set of crocheted stitches across Hans' left fourth intercoastal section.

The reformed pub thugs had done such a bang up job, that the boy was now peacefully sleeping, the danger passed. And maybe a tinge of Eugene's own darling Rapunzel's magical tears that had spilled over Hans before they took off to the sky had some residual effects in his quick healing, too.

This was the first time that he examined his little brother's wound since the pub thugs had finished working the stitches on Hans later that evening. They then subsequently helped carry the ether and laughing gas knocked-out unconscious lad up to this pub's loft for a full night of rest.

" _'Denn dein ist das reich und die kraft, und die Herrlichkeit in Ewig Keitt. Amen._ '" (For Thine is the kingdom, power and the glory, now and forever. Amen.) In his native tongue, now true believer in the Almighty, Eugene Fitzherbert, finishes the silent prayer in gratitude to the Creator above.

Satisfied that Hans and Job were both breathing normally and no longer suffering the ill effects of infected feverishness or wasting away from blood loss, Eugene lets out a sigh of relief as he cradles his own battered and bleeding knuckles. He decides the best medicine for them might just be a stiff drink – _or two_ – to keep him company this lonely night where he could find no sleep.

And just because Eugene was now a praying man, it didn't necessarily make the irreverent thief a teetotaler. He was in a bar, after all.

"Hey! How about a neat whiskey, on the house, of course, for your returned conquering hero, my silent Buddy?" Flynn places his arrogant order at the empty bar to the plump cheeked bald man left on duty. Ulf mimes some rather heroic poses as the theatrical act before giving in out of sad-eyed pity to bring an amused, smirking Flynn his alcoholic beverage.

Exhaling sharply as he pours a liberal amount of the high proof alcohol over his bared knuckles to numb them, Eugene turns when a ticking tongue berates his actions.

"That's no way to treat a tall glass of whiskey, boy! Here, let me show you how it's done." In one felled swig, Shorty the drunk puts away the rest of the entire glass's contents as a displeased Flynn frowns down at the dwarf.

"Okay. That's the same trick you played at my wedding toast. Now you owe me two rounds, old man. By the way, how did you get to be my best man back then anyway? The happiest day of my life went by in such a blur, I never got the chance to ask how that all went down. After the runaway wedding cake slid off the balcony to be skewered on top of the cracked ice sculpture; the ill-timed doves and the flying lanterns' early release; the ripped banner of an inept likeness of my nose; the flooded town full of wine and the tarred and feathered horse and frog, I guess that little detail got mixed up in the melee. Hmmm…" Eugene asks, demands and accuses the drunk short man on one breath, to which Shorty merely answers:

"We drew straws and mine came up –"

"Let me guess – Shorty." Eugene rolls his eyes at the old used up joke that only the chortling elderly man found funny.

Him and one other guy.

"Ha ha ha! That's a laugh, Flynn, old pal! Is your witty humor the secret to your being a good husband after all these years? And since you're awake now, we can have that discussion about… you know…that the wedded bliss stuff, right? From one happily married man to another." In his high pitched whispering voice, due to his recent operation of a goiter nodule removed at the back of his throat, Big Nose taps Eugene on the arm with the specific query.

"You said we could have that little chat later. So, now is later, am I correct?" The accented large schnauz man

Eugene gives a hopeful Big Nose a sideways, skeptical glance.

"So, boys, speaking of forgetting a little fact in all the surgical excitement earlier –" Flynn, maybe not too comfortable with discussing the emotional aspect of his relationship that he was still learning the ropes of, while certain that he was quite an experienced ace at – ahem, the more physical facet of marital life – _God, I miss you Liebling –_ and was egotistical enough to brag about it, he was not in the mood to share intimate secrets of his love life with his fair-skinned Princess Rapunzel with this curious Big Nose amateur. A decent man had to draw the line somewhere.

So, what else to do but change the thorny, awkward subject?

"I know you're gonna think this announcement calls for drinks all around, in honor of your beautiful benefactress, Princess Rapunzel! So, without further ado, raise your glasses high, boys, with me in a toast to my lady love. Because she is gonna make me a new Daddy soon!" Eugene announces to the growing crowd of pub thugs who seem to crawl out of the woodwork at the offer of free booze and toasts.

"Yeah!" They all scream out in unison enthusiastically.

"You, a father? Holy Toledo!" Big Nose's sore goiter causes his voice to come out two octaves too high, but his girly tone is drowned out when more than a few of the others call out:

"To Princess Rapunzel! And her Thief's new Baby! To Rapunzel and her Thief's Baby!"

"Still just 'her Thief'? Have I no moniker of my own? Ouch, that hurts. Hey! Keep it down guys! You'll wake the patients!" Eugene may have thwarted Big Nose's pressing questions, but he may have opened his own new can of worms.

"So you _**did**_ have a real live dream in you, after all, Thief! It took you long enough. Me and the guys were beginning to think you had a problem." Hookhand comes sauntering down to the bar in his pajamas and night sleeping mask at the raucous commotion down on the tavern floor.

"Better late than never to increase the surplus population!" Fang mockingly comments with a snide snicker from him and each of his nodding rodent friends on his shoulders.

Silent Vladimir, in turn, slaps Eugene so hard on the back that the father-to-be almost heaves.

"Now, it's our Big Nose's turn to start his dream a-baking in the oven, too!" An eavesdropping Attila peeks his metal covered noggin in from the pub kitchen where he had been a baking fool all night. The talented cupcake man had been getting the wedding cake for tomorrow finished.

With sweet Hilde the bride and syrupy Big Nose the groom in sugar figurine form seated in a rowboat as the cake topper, the cake had to be decorated in time for the planned outdoor sunset reception to be held in the Dancing Forest near the stream where an actual rowboat was awaiting their romantic rendezvous.

"Aw, guys. Please don't tease me about this." Humiliated, Big Nose' big red nose was not all that was blushing now, as the noisy fellas begin to serenade the idealistically romantic, tender man of the hour.

"Come on, Big Nose! That shiner of a fancy ring you've been showing off that your family sent you for your little Brunhilde is worth at least another round of drinks! And a song, to present the double celebration, eh, Daddy Rider?" Hookhand, toothily sneers towards Flynn after throwing a knife to get the ever present, otherwise unnoticed accordion player slacker to shakily start his musical instruction.

Then, right on cue, the extra large tank of a man named Vladimir picks up Eugene by his shoulders to hang him by his shirt jacket on the elk head trophy's horns where it was adorning the wall above the key missing, holey and beat up piano beside the beer barrel vat.

"No no no no no, boys. I still don't sing." Flynn holds his hands up, though knowing resistance was indeed futile around here.

"You don't sing, huh? Then dance for us, Daddy-O!" Several of the pub thugs stick out various sharpened objects to make their point.

 _Here we go again…_

Flynn mentally comments drolly with a sleepless sigh as each of the rowdy Snuggly Duckling attendees swat off Shorty to fill their own glasses full of beer barrel offerings that were spilling out from Hookhand's thrown blade.

So there they were, right beneath Eugene's knife avoided feet and unenviable stretched apart legs that were just long enough to dance for their enjoyment on the vibrating up and down, bashed about piano lid. The misused instrument was still melodic somehow nonetheless, as Hookhand sadistically begins to tickle the ivories with his silver hook in a pounding rhythm beneath Flynn's dancing feet, until the poor man is finally let down to collapse splat on the piano lid.

But the thief"s eyes light up when, down below, Gunther and Thor wrestle an abashed Big Nose until he produces from its velvet padded ring box case, an intricately handcrafted pure gold and silver inlaid engagement ring. The large and ornate betrothal ring had at its fancy stylized gold peak, a delicately embossed and decorated house, surrounded by ribbons and flower designs that had been created with love for a young couple to signify the blessing of a happy home they would make together.

"Wow. Now that's a ring and a half, Big Nose." Eugene whistles loudly as his greedy eyes drink in the designer golden ring's ostentatiously decorated sight.

It causes the man to feel a pang of past guilt for only acquiring for his Rapunzel a plain cheap gold band of flawed cubic zirconia as their engagement ring. The penniless, jobless thief who had given up his trade, had pawned his first Christmas present from the royal family—a fancy brass and gold plated buckle belt, since his vocation at the time had been banned by his blushing bride-to-be.

"My Aged P of a father had been working and working on it for a year and just finished this week! He's a bit of a perfectionist and wouldn't settle for anything less than the best for his only son. Go figure. He's been going on and on about it since I first proposed to my Hilde. So now the wedding will be complete. Good old Aged P." Big Nose sighs dreamily with a languorous smile at the lovely thought of finally fulfilling his lifelong dream of settling down with his own special little lady.

A sticky fingered Flynn Rider can't help but pilfer the genuine high filigree gold, Prussian Jewry's jewelry, just wanting to hold something so precious for a while that was so bright and shiny.

"Good old aged P!" A slew of pub thugs chime in salute to Big Nose's 'Aged Parent' as they lift their friend up in the air with a cheer.

"This really does call for a song! Too bad you can't sing, Thief." Retrieving the swiped gold ring back from Flynn's palm with his hook, Hookhand sneers in Eugene's bedazzled face. Then the piano player slings another one of Fang's hidden knives into the wall again above that poor accordion player's sniveling head.

"You're getting married in the morning!" Hookhand's gravelly voice begins the song's chorus as he plunks down to his piano bench seat begins to play a humorous marching tune.

"This may be the day that fulfills all of your dreams." Attila's thin metallic voice echoes in Big Nose's wistful ear.

"You're getting married in the morning!" Hookhand repeats loudly right in Flynn's disgusted-by-his-morning-breath face.

"But before you get to row down marital streams," Gunther's high vibrato takes the next line of the impromptu song.

"There's something to do to get the girl to linger!" Fang's throaty tone hisses.

"Must slide that ring around her finger!" All of the Snuggly Duckling thugs chorus from around the lively barroom with each made up line.

"Watch her gleam and shine that ring so proud!" Vladimir's low bass creates the next verse.

"While the preacher asks for your vow!" Bruiser joins in here, imaginatively as he was still knitting the final touches on the concealed sweater-for-two.

"Like an anchor around your neck, her apron strings too tight. Your happy days of freedom vanish clear out of sight." With the dim view of married life, old Shorty's dizzy pitch warbles out the interlude.

"So slide that ring 'round her finger!" The disorderly gang torments Eugene as each stick a napkin ring, metal nut or washer of some sort on the picked-on and spun man's battered fingers.

"Although you might regret it, make sure that you don't miss!" Hookhand and a pantomiming Ulf act this one out with live Flynn as the guinea pig 'bride'. As the rowdy crowd of folks all pass around the whopper of a golden ring, they each try to put the big gold band on. But it wouldn't fit any of their enlarged nobbly pinkie fingers, save for Eugene's nimble ones.

The gang all raucously laugh at their unwitting victim when a new entrant to the obstreperous scene makes his lyrical presence known.

"Then seal the forever deal with a lasting kiss!" The beautiful perfect pitch, perfect range, perfect tenor rings throughout the pub from somewhere in the loft above their heads. Each pub thug turns to see a semi-delirious, ether affected, dizzy, yet right on tune, Hans Westergaard slide down the stairwell banister to toss his soaring vocals into the merrymaking fray.

Ever the accomplished performer, Hans throws a romantically amorous kiss directly at the ice sculptured voluptuous female Cupid that artistic Gunther had been chipping at for the wedding presentation reception tomorrow.

Eugene is gape-mouthed astonished when Hans, in a trancelike dreamy state, agile leaps onto the stage to sit at the piano that Hookhand had abandoned momentarily to help decorate Eugene's big thumb with a bent spoon that the former seaman fashioned with his powerful hand.

And in his lightheaded, ether induced hallucination, the Danish Prince starts playing a harmonious fluid rendition of Handel's uplifting "Air in G major" with all of its titillating notes and playful interludes of variation, and semi-quavers to the right and left handed orchestral arrangement.

The light and airy Andantanio's upbeat tempo that Hans plays from memory has the entire barroom stunned into intrigued listening silence. Then the accomplished pianist since his lonely childhood closes this lovely classical piece that was oft played at weddings, with a brilliant crescendo, soon followed by pleased applause.

"Bravo! I can't believe this amazing guy is related to you, Thief!" Even by an impressed, not too broken-nosed at being shown up at the piano keys Hookhand, who puts his hands together in enthused clapping, for this unexpectedly talented little brother of the thief he elbows in the coughing gut.

"Thank you, thank you, gentlemen." In a faraway fantasy realm, the young man with so many hidden talents, stands before his stunned and approving audience. Then they all cheer and whistle enthusiastically for their newest friend and new rondo buddy who was unashamed to sing along with the boisterous bunch.

"You have got to be kidding me." Flynn's eyes droop in heavy-lidded incredulity at the sight of Hans being applauded and slapped on the back in friendly acceptance for his participation by the Snuggly Duckling team.

 _Unbelievable! Even these pub thugs like you better, Sideburns! Why is it that nobody ever likes me?!_

Flynn scrutinizingly marvels at his charmer of a Lillebror's uncanny knack for gaining a stranger's trust that he himself was sorely lacking.

 _Think you'd better give me a few pointers in that charm department, Kid_.

But in the next second, Eugene notes that the comely and popular new Maestro's wobbly legs were about to give out after Hans gives a flourished bow. Eugene scrambles to make an intuitive diving leap across from the bar stage, sliding across the musically discordant keys to catch his weak brother's fall.

"Slide that ring on her finger!...Princess Elsa, would you do me the extreme honor of becoming my wife?" With Big Nose's extravagant ring that had somehow been passed into Hans's deft hand, the delirious proposal question that had been practiced so many times for proper delivery and elocution in every daydream and nighttime fantasy for practically as long as the boy Prince could remember, slips from Hans' soft lips.

His fuzzy mind envisions Gunther's icy blue white life-like size ice sculpture statue whose feet he had fallen at, as Elsa of Arendelle's lissome visage, just before he passes out again in Eugene's responsible arms.

"Okay, enough bachelor night party for you, lover boy. Let's break up the festivities for now, guys, and let these two dreamers get some proper shut-eye, so they're bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning for the important big event."

Feeling like the only sane man in the room, Eugene expertly shakes off all the faux rings from his fingers as he ambles from the stage. Noting how a similarly weary Big Nose was falling into his beer, Eugene slips the fancy ring of a gold family heirloom back into the groom's slumbering ring case and back into his jacket pocket.

 _How's that for a changed man, Darlin'? I've been so reformed by your good influence that I'm actually_ _returning_ _gold jewelry to its owner, rather than stealing it for my own worldly gain. Gotta be a good role model from now on to make our kid proud_ …Eugene magnanimously thinks as he carries Hans back up the Snuggly Duckling's back stairs to get some final hours of restful shut eye after that flamboyant musical display.

* * *

"Are you sure I can leave you to handle this, Anna?" Elsa's tentative voice almost cracks when she watches her little sister chase a giggling Olaf around the throne in Arendelle's throne room, until both the girl and the summer hayfever prone snowman were both breathless.

"Ah-choo!" A loudly sneezing Olaf sends his prized carrot nose flying in a direct path at Anna's yellow rosette decorated circlet tiara that she had first worn at her wedding. The projectile root vegetable knocks the pretty tiara off kilter until it falls over one of Anna's blinking eyes.

"Sure. No sweat." Positioning the gold and pink jeweled tiara back securely on the crown of her head, Anna brashly shows off her overconfidence by plopping down onto Elsa's throne and crossing her legs over the edge of the large chair as if she owned the place.

"Oof!" Just then, the wily carrot that had balanced itself on a chandelier above is blown down in a wisp of wind until it lands squarely upon Anna's unsuspecting head, in doing so, knocking her straightened tiara crooked again.

"See? All under control." The mischievous young woman states assertively, shoving the carrot back into Olaf's 'brain freeze!' head, as if nothing happened.

"Whew! That was a close one! I wouldn't want to go on my picnic with Eliana nose-less." Olaf goes from dapper boyfriend to silly talking ditz in a frost-frozen second.

"I'm cool." Then he wanders off, petting back his slicked back branch hairs as he leaves the throne room.

"Oh, Anna. Please take this seriously. Everyone will be looking to you for leadership while I'm gone." Straightening the still off-center tiara on her sister's head, Elsa uses her icy prowess to gently swat off Anna's crossed ankles from disrespecting the throne with her feet slung over the side of the velvet corded arm rest.

"You worry too much, Elsie! Everything will be fine here! Kristoff and I can handle the people. They're our friends! We'll take care of everything on this end! You just focus on taking care of Papa and Mama for the next few weeks up in your North Mountain getaway's 'spa treatment'. When you come back here, Arendelle Castle will be all spruced up, ready for its King and Queen again. Everything will be right as rain in no time, you'll see!" Always full of sunshine, Anna leaps up from the single throne to hug her big sister's reservations and qualms away.

"You really think it will only take that long for me to help Papa adjust?" More in her sweet tentative voice than her harsh commanding elder sister tone, Elsa allows Anna to move her towards the Castle's front entrance. There, Kai and Gerda had already assembled a small contingent of their most trusted fellow servants. After giving a short explanation of requirements of complete rest for the retrieved King and Queen, the chosen team agreed to travel up to the North Mountain alongside their miraculously return monarchs, without leaking a word to anyone in the village about it, just yet.

"I know it! Even my new mother-in-law, you know, _**the**_ _**Snow Queen**_ , believes in you, Elsa! Papa just needs some rest before he's ready to come back to Arendelle. So don't rush him! Sit back and enjoy the private family time with our parents, showing off all the architectural artistry of your breathtaking Ice Palace. Meanwhile, Kristly and I can use the opportunity for honeymoon _take two_ , right? So Take Your Time." Anna winks to her instantly blushing big sister while the piquant Princess waves coquettishly over to her hunky husband she knew had psychically overheard her, judging from the blush creeping up Kristoff's thick red neck.

Kristoff clears his throat while he goes back to discussing plans with some of the castle builders to get the royal workman to reopen and cleanup the dusty spiderwebs from the original throne room that had been closed up since her parents' unfortunate accident and untimely demise.

"How are they doing? The coming home to Arendelle after five long years away, never knowing if they were gonna make it back to not, must be kind of overwhelming." Anna asks, suddenly going thoughtful. Kristoff soon appears, sensing her mood change as he readjusts that crooked tiara one more time, followed by a tender flick beneath her chin to wordlessly cheer her up. She gives him a sweet appreciative smile as she and Elsa then walk side-by-side through the castle up towards the royal main bedroom.

The minute they had arrived back in Arendelle, energetic Gerda had rushed through the front door to race through the King and Queen's rooms to give a quick fresh flower airing. The dutiful servant woman was glad that she and faithful Johanne had always kept the missing rulers' rooms dusted and aired out, if just to keep their beloved memory alive.

"Papa came to consciousness just long enough for him to be in disbelief that Kai had left Johanne in charge of Arendelle in their absence." Kai's younger sister named Johanne, Agdar's old nanny, was hardly the snobbish, staid, and starchy King's first choice to run Arendelle. Although, the scoffing monarch, even as he was slipping back away, was laughing with Mama at the idea of the stern, prickly lady's maid as decisional head of the kingdom for these last three weeks.

Elsa and Anna both break into chuckles as well at the thought of their uptight servant friend running Arendelle, titillating giggles until the pair had arrived at their parents' bedroom.

Looking in each other's eyes at the significance of opening the door and finding their loved ones inside again, the Arendelle sisters, arms entwined together, push open the double doors.

And share a smile to find their handsome, kind eyed Papa patiently seated on the bed, folding clothes his wife hands him into a trunk while their pretty little Mama scurries about between her closet and dressers that the fashionable Queen had been separated from for far too long.

"You all right, Papa?" Anna asks, strangling arms around Agdar's sitting neck after running some tickling fingers along Idun's tiny waist, almost making the off-balance Queen drop her arms full of scarves, gloves, and that dreaded corset in her feisty daughter's wake.

"I would be better, if your mother didn't require transferring her entire wardrobe into this one singular trunk." The King's baritone was pleasantly warm as his teasing eyes smile over to his beautiful Queen, who was beside herself all morning with choosing from her outdated clothing choices for a summer to be spent in a winter North Mountain setting.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about clothes, Mama! Elsa can make you an exquisite designer ice dress that just melts off when it's time to wash! Ooh, and you don't need that nasty thing, either!" Anna impetuously declares and sings candidly open before both her parents as she tosses aside to the bed beside an amused Papa the despised female torture device, a.k.a. the 'corset.'

"Anna! Propriety! And I think my ice gowns would be too cold for Mama to wear, silly goose." Feeling like melting herself into the floor, Elsa, feeling responsible for raising her sister these past few years, chides her crude younger sibling to speak so frankly blunt in front of Mama - and Papa too! - about such delicate feminine subjects as corsets and melting off clothing in this prudish Victorian day and age.

"How about one for Papa, then? He can take the sub-zero frost, _and_ he's still got a nice figure." With a mischievous glint in her eye to a jaw-dropped Elsa, Anna teases her respected patriarch, causing Agdar and Idun to both stifle raised eyebrow chuckles at their irreverent daughter's hilarious behavior.

"Just as we thought, our little sunbeam has not altered one bit, my dear." Although his refined sensibilities had just been put through Anna's tactlessly outspoken ringer, King Agdar was glad to see his little hoyden, who took after her mother in Idun's youthful days, had not at all been jaded by time nor being thrust out into an unfamiliar world.

"Praise the Lord, that both of our girls turned out so fine." Idun says, turning from her closet to caress the porcelain white face of her sheltered, yet strong-willed Elsa as her first child was quietly helping her mother choose outfits. In an agreed smiled nod, Agdar leans his pounding head against Anna's warmly hugged arms around his neck.

"Yes, Idun. God has been good to us, to give us such loving children. We are so proud… _huff_ … of you both… _Argh_." Agdar's composed face abruptly cringes as he cradles his left arm. The King immediately rolls up his jacket sleeve to inspect the summer heat reactive pallid blue-white it was phasing into again.

With startled wide eyes, Anna feels her father's sudden cool breath against her neck as Elsa closes her eyes to regulate the overcompensating surging ice in Agdar's veins.

"Elsa. We should be going soon." Queen Idun could see that, try hard as he might, even as her stoic mate had put his whole mind to it all morning, it was growing more difficult for her husband to restrain his cryokinetics as the warmth of the noonday in southern Norway's Arendelle wore on.

Elsa had tried to keep this room especially chilled, but Arendelle Castle was not as well insulated as her Palace in the North Mountain that would serve as a better setting for her father's reconditioning and recuperative rest.

"I'll get Kristoff to bring down your trunk! I bet it's real heavy as all get-out with Mama piling all those clothes into there!" Anna hustles out of the room to fetch her strong strapping guy once she leaps off from where she was sitting on top of the trunk lid, for Elsa to use her ice magic to seal the ornery trunk shut from popping open with all of Mama's clothes.

"Don't you think it would be preferable for Anna to join us at that Ice Palace of yours, Elsa dear? She is just a child still, after all. And to be left in charge… with the responsibility of Arendelle, by herself with that…mountain man…" Once he catches his breath under his daughter's temperate assistance, King Agdar begins to argue one last time of the unsuitability of leaving Anna alone to the whims of that rugged Ice Harvester commoner.

"Papa. I can assure you that _Snow Prince_ Kristoff is a good man." Using Kristoff's newly acquired title, Elsa attempts to ease her Papa's mind, seeing what direction his thoughts were traveling.

But the fact that young Master Bjorgman _was_ a _**man**_ he would be leaving alone with his innocent daughter was what was bothering this overprotective father's already overtaxed mind.

"Exactly… But Anna is far too young to be married. She doesn't know her own mind yet. I wonder how long…" Trailing off from adding the word 'annulment' to their discussion just yet, Agdar knew young men from his Navy days well enough to simply give in to the fact that his precious little, naive Anna had married this lowly common mountain man in his fatherly absence. He would hardly be inclined to allow such an inappropriate match, no matter how highly recommended that this ' _Kristoff's'_ bloodline from the Snow Queen herself came, it was just too much…

"Agdar. If you look back to remember, _**I**_ was only _**sixteen**_ years old when a brash young man came and swept me off my feet. My handsome Prince married me soon thereafter, when I was years junior to Anna's age now. And we turned out quite a content and happily suited loving couple, I believe." Idun calmly states her younger daughter's side of this longstanding argument every father felt in passing his precious child's safeguard to another man.

"Well, certainly you were a more mature sixteen, then, Idun." Try as he might to sustain his judicial tribunal, Agdar then realizes that his resistance was futile when his wife merely chuckles at him.

"Was I? Picking flowers and running roughshod over the countryside? You are too funny, min alskare. Not a word more about this, you silly man." The mother of the house orders her royal husband, smacking his tight rear end as he stands from the bed, like the never-too-mature-to-enjoy-life Queen used to playfully do. Just the same as the unchanged sixteen-year-old girl he met once upon a time at the beginning of their own fairytale.

After Anna rushes back in, totally unaware of the conversation concerning her future, Kristoff sheepishly bows his red cheeked head to the King and Queen as he enters their bedroom behind her. Anna simply points a finger down at the trunk, and the large muscled man, back in his grey and teal summer tunic and vest, wordlessly lifts up the heavy awkward case that would've taken at least two normal footmen to handle the purveyance thereof, as if it weighed next to nothing.

Elsa at Papa's side and Anna at Mama's, the girls help their parents downstairs, before the excited eyes of the well-wishing servants. The sisters usher their parents through the back castle door exit where even more multiple servants and helpers were coming and going, carrying all kinds of provisions and supplies in and out to the entourage of waiting royal carriages.

"I'm gonna miss you guys so much!" Anna says in her ' _I'm the baby, gotta love me!'_ sweet voice as she hugs her Papa, whom Kai emerges from the prepared carriage interior to help prop up Agdar on his other side. The King stumbles out through the promenade in a slow-moving, concentrated manner as he walks out into the summer heat of late July.

Once at the carriage, with Elsa's ice, a maintained King Agdar pauses mid-step to wrap his littlest child up in a big bear hug that she loved as a tiny girl. Not quite able to spin her around high in the air he did then, when he was off to his Naval service, Papa still was able to offer Anna the same warm smile and goodbye kiss.

Agdar nods to various faithful servants to keep the kingdom watched and protected while they were away. All while giving Kristoff a cold shoulder warning, wary glance when the mountain man courteously bids Anna and Elsa's Father a safe trip.

"Yes. Thank you, for your kind consideration, Kristoff. My husband and I are **so** very grateful that you are here to stand beside Anna in our time of need. We are forever in your debt for all that you have already done for our family." Queen Idun, amused and slightly ashamed at her curt, overprotective husband's treatment of the sweet faced young blond, picks up her ill mannered mate's slack. She shakes Kristoff's stuck-out offered hand to Agdar in both of hers affectionately in his stead.

"Thank you…uh…Your Majesty." Raised a commoner his whole life by Saami traders, mountain men and trolls, Kristoff often forgot to add the polite address. But he catches Elsa and Kai's wide-eyed prompting in the corner of his eye.

"'Mama'. Please feel free to call me 'Mama,' too, Kristoff. Just like Anna does, because you're part of her, so you're part of our family now, too. " Idun tenderly squeezes Kristoff's big hand in her small one. The Queen surprises the reddened Ice Harvester, causing him to go all wide-eyed and speechless in shock when the diminutive Queen of Arendelle steps on her tippytoes to plant a motherly kiss on the twenty-three-year-old boy's cheek.

"I personally became acquainted with how your real Mama cares for you and would want me to embrace you as my own child." She speaks from the heart in her unique experience of sharing her physical form with the timeless Snow Queen, whose own maternal soul Idun had glimpsed.

"You're the best Mama ever! You know that?" Anna had happy tears in her eyes at her Kristoff being accepted by her loving parents (at least one half) as she rushes to embrace her sweet mother.

"I know. Now you be a good girl and listen to Johanne, my Flutterbudget. And eat your vegetables." A chuckling Idun kisses her wildflower Anna and nuzzles their noses together with the same nutritional caring and maternal warmth she did when they were the small little girls she would sing to bed.

"I trust you to take care of our Anna." From his carriage seat that helpful Kristoff assists in helping the stiff older man into, King Agdar finally relents to meet Kristoff's honest eyes with this relying bond of trust.

"I will, Sir." Kristoff answers sincerely and securely with a sure nod, the men's eyes intersecting as the blond young man aids Queen Idun into her seat beside her husband.

"If anything really difficult comes up, Anna, be sure to send word." Elsa rejoins her family after having a word with the castle stable groomsman about saddling up a certain horse for the younger Queen to personally ride up to the North Mountain.

Elsa hugs and kisses her baby sister tenderly before turning to leave, with a nod to Kristoff and many of the other servants of her kingdom left behind to care for Arendelle.

As Elsa mounts 'Prince Hansome' - AKA Hans' fjord stallion 'Sitron' - her eyes glaze over to where she could just make out a certain cocoa brown haired Prussian Princess. Rapunzel was skulking in the sunlit shadows of the Castle promenade, silently watching the family ready for departure.

"Cousin Rapunzel!" Elsa calls out, just about to prompt Sitron to meet Rapunzel halfway, when the tensed barefoot Princess retreats off into the rear garden tree line.

 _Sigh._

"Please give Rapunzel all my love and well wishes, Anna." Composing herself, Elsa merely speaks the niceties. Even though a thousand other words were caught in her dry throat that she longed to ask this cousin who had grown so close to both she and Anna that the Arendelle girls considered Rapunzel almost a third sister.

Perhaps Rapunzel had something to hide from Elsa. _And maybe she was right to keep that secret hidden… Maybe Prince Hans told his new sister-in-law he wanted nothing to do with her troublesome, ice-powered cousin, after all._

Elsa considers sadly the uncertainties of her budding – perhaps wilted – romance with a certain courageous Prince from the Southern Isles.

"God be with you, Anna. Please take care of each other, Kristoff." With a fond wave goodbye, the Queen of Arendelle, astride the golden coated, black and white mane, fjord horse– _ **his**_ horse–gives the carriages containing her Mama and Papa, Kai and Gerda and an army of servants and provisions for weeks of an extended stay in her North Mountain palace the go-ahead to follow her lead.

"Let us begin, Sitron." As Elsa addresses the horse in its original owner's name, Sitron cocks his inquisitive head, looking backwards curiously. He had not heard himself be called by that name for a long time since he and his beloved master had parted ways. The whinnying fjord horse had cause to wonder along this crossing now, how his beautiful new mistress discovered his true identity.

Upon fearless Sitron, whom Elsa had trained as her own reliable steed, the Ice Queen races towards the waters at full gallop. Her mental ice powers, which had expanded since this incredible journey's end, instantly frost freeze a thick solid path across the empty fjord towards the other side of its banks, on a direct course towards the North Mountain palace of Elsa's Ice Kingdom…

* * *

 _Moments after Elsa and the_ _North_ _Mountain-_ _bound carriage train disappear around the mountainous bends…_

"Okay! Kristoff! Sven! Olaf! We have a mission! Find me Cousin Rapunzel! We have to have a serious talk…"

Once the hoopla of the remaining servants and castle grounds caretakers scurrying back to their normal household duties settles, Princess Anna's smiling face turns all foreboding and sober.

She pounds a fist in one hand for effect, as Anna tries to toughen up and look intimidating enough to scare the truth out of her skitterish cousin, whatever it may be.

* * *

"What're you doing up there, Cousin Rapunzel? I've been looking everywhere for you!"

At the sound of the sudden voice breaking the still silence, Pascal the chameleon nearly jumps out of his yellow backed skin from where he was taking a noontime snooze. The reptile goes all colors as he starts to tumble down from where he and Rapunzel had been cowering in a tall, old, oak tree.

Luckily for the frightened lizard, the multitasking girl's quick hand reached out to catch him in the nick of time.

Wiping back the veil of her red-eyed tears, the Prussian Princess peers down from the twenty-five foot tall bough that the emotionally spent girl had been perched upon.

She had been this way for a while now, her pretty face buried in her knees as the lonesome brunette was crying out for her missing love's support and guidance as she withholds a lonely secret.

"Olaf? Did everyone else leave?" Rapunzel sniffles as she calls down to the unmistakably single snowman that she spies the base of the tree.

"Not Anna. Or Kristoff. Or Sven and Svala, for that matter. And me and my girl, Eliana – Oh, you have to meet Eliana! We're still here!" Olaf the snowman pleasantly counts off the names of his friends on his branchy fingers as he projects his silly voice upwards for the well-balanced girl to hear.

"Boy, it must be fun to sit way up there in that tall, tall tree! Gee, I wish I could climb, too…" Olaf attempts to motivate his three mounds to climb up the oak's bark, but he only succeeds in slipping his twigs along the rough bark.

"Hold on, little guy! I'm a-coming! I'll get you up there, Olaf! Hop on my back!" Anna's melodic lyric soprano sings from out from nowhere.

Rapunzel curiously looks around from her high vantage point to see the orange haired Princess come rolling over the hillside and kneel down for Olaf to jump on her back.

"This one was always my favorite tree to climb, too! I named him Mr. Oakly when I was little! Mr. Oakly was so big and sprawling and endlessly strong that he could reach up so high in the sky! How did you know he was my dear friend?! You must be psychic, like Kristly!" All of Anna's tough-guy-ness is siphoned into her adoration of nature, as the lonely little girl of yesteryear often turned to the wonders the great outdoors to be her quiet, nonverbal companions while growing up.

Like a little monkey more than a graceful Princess, Anna of Arendelle capably climbs the thick trunk of the erect tree until she was at even eye level with her weepy cousin on the rambling thick branch.

Rapunzel smiles at the quaint thought of naming a tree. She rubs her tears away as Anna crawls towards her, making the entire limb shiver and shake with wobbly energy.

"So, how's the weather up here on Mr. Oakly?" Anna, after catching her breath and keeping her balance on the branch, tries to remain diplomatic with her emotional cousin.

"Nice." Rapunzel stifles a sniffle as Olaf hops from Anna's back and swings on her pair of braids down to the main tree limb's green offerings.

"I like climbing trees." Olaf announces in awe of his lofty surrounding as he carefully waddles sideways and reaches up to investigate the higher branch parallel to his snowy head.

"This is like being in a real treehouse, isn't it? When we were growing up, I always wanted to build a treehouse on Mr. Oakly with Elsa, but she just didn't like coming outside and playing with flowers and trees, and the critters and bugs like I did. She only liked outdoors for playing in the snow when we were really tiny. I loved that too!" The prattling Princess of Arendelle dallies with a creepy crawling caterpillar that was inching its way up the tree branch right over her head. She giggles with glee at the ticklish memories it brought back.

"Ooh, come here you fuzzy wuzzy widdle cattypilly… you cutie you –Ohh!" Olaf, in trying to catch his new caterpillar friend that he accidentally knocked off the perpendicular branch above, plummets from the twenty-five foot high tree limb to fragment his three dissected parts across the ground below, his personal snow flurry confused as to which one to stick to.

 _ **Splat! Splat! Splat!**_

"Olaf!" Rapunzel and Anna both cry out, banging their jerked heads together to watch their fallen frozen friend carrot nose-dive down.

Poor Olaf is dashed asunder, all while the resilient caterpillar merely clings to the next branch that its rows of sucker feet descended to cling to.

"It's all good! Just got a get my butt back in shape before my hot date with Eliana! You girls try to have fun up there without me! Come on, torso, arms and butt! Doubletime reconnect fast! Eliana's on her way! My PSF (personal snow flurry) can sense it! And you know how she gets when you're tardy!" Under the pressure of love, Olaf was muttering to his disobedient unruly body parts to collect back together pronto. It was as though they seemed particularly inharmonious and love-confused with one another at the thought of meeting with the chilly snow girl.

"Hee, hee hee." "Hee hee hee." Rapunzel and Anna girlishly giggle together at the funny sight of the snowman's scrambling best attempts, once he collected himself back together, to dress up. Olaf tugs on a spur-of-the-moment fashioned leaf bowtie to spiff himself up to impress any female heart, even a thoroughly snowed-in one like his Eliana's.

Speaking of feminine hearts, now that Olaf had literally broken the proverbial ice…

"You really are like a sister to us, 'Punzy. Elsa and I love you to bits." Anna sincerely said, hugging an arm around her brown-haired cousin warmly as they laugh together with their four gangly legs dangling and kicking over the tall bowed oak tree branches like little girls again.

"Aww. I really love you guys that much, too. You're the little sisters I always dreamed of growing up with, but never had." Rapunzel feels all familiar warm and fuzzy inside, more than the morning sickness that she had been wallowing in, that had driven her to the liberating height.

Which was really no sweat for the girl who spent her entire life looking out a seventy foot tall tower's high-altitude window.

"And this crazy adventure has made us **so** close, hasn't it? But like Elsa and I discovered the hard way, _**close**_ sisters should _**never**_ keep secrets from one another! Don't you agree, Big Sister 'Punzy?" The blunt girl slides in that not so tactful adage, although she did truly feel that way inside.

"Oh yes. Secrets aren't very…conducive to sisterly…love...oh." Rapunzel, guilty herself of holding back a hidden secret, bit her lower lip until it was a blood drained pale pink.

"Then you should _**confess**_ to your _**loving**_ little sister exactly _**where**_ a certain _**Mr. Hans Westergaard**_ got off to! Not the mention your own cut-and-run hubby Eugene. Right, Big Sisty?" Anna transforms from a sweet wheedling baby sister to a tough-as-nails prosecutor in a few seconds flat.

All at once, she ceases plucking at the green stem leaves of the summery dandelion she had carried all the way up here, to ruthlessly huff, puff, and blow at the fluffy pom-pom until not a single petal was left on the naked stem.

"But Hans made Eugene and I swear not tell Elsa…he said he didn't want to be a burden on her or your family…" Rapunzel, after a long lip-bit silence, exchanges a look with a convincing Pascal to ante up the silent deceit that had been eating up at the pregnant young woman inside for the past few days.

"Yeah. I know all about that Hans had been frozen solid by Elsa and he didn't want her to feel guilty and all. But we all saw him after that, back to flesh and blood and fine. What I want to know is: why did that Casanova just take off and leave my poor Elsie hanging – If that jerk breaks her heart this time, after all she's been through… I'll never, never-ever forgive him again!" Conjecturing at an uber-speeded pace, Anna feels quite easy discussing these trials of the heart with her new 'sister' Rapunzel, especially in the freeing open air altitude of their shared treehouse hideout.

"He didn't **mean** to leave!" Crying out a pitch too fervently, Rapunzel felt the need to clear her self-sacrificing brother-in-law's good name from being so reviled and ridiculed undeservedly.

"Hans just had to go." More quietly, Rapunzel, ashamed to betray his deathbed promise, tones down her frenetic voice as she averts her eyes from Anna's inquiring ones.

"But why? Why did he leave so suddenly? Couldn't he have stuck around to say a proper goodbye at least, and be done with it?" Anna stubbornly demands, grabbing her cousin and shaking her by the shoulders, not satisfied with the ' _he just had to go'_ defense, at all.

The lugubrious tears that begin to stream down Rapunzel's brilliant green eyes glisten with more agonized melancholy than Anna had ever seen expressed before in them.

"Because… _ **Sob...**_ Hans was dying, Anna! _**Weep...**_ When he was driving the ship to the Lofoten port, that evil pirate snuck up and stabbed him in the back! _**Sob...**_ And he begged Eugene to take him away… _ **Sniffle.**_..So Elsa wouldn't be sad. _**Sob...**_ Eugene said he would try to get him help… But it was a very, very bad wound to his stomach…And he was so weak and bleeding so much... **_S _niffle.__**..I don't think he was going to make it…" _**Sob!**_ Just about able to choke out in between sobs of her heart-wrenched words, Rapunzel conveys all the hidden clandestine concealment her beleaguered heart had been covertly avoiding her cousins, Aunt, and Uncle, as not to be questioned.

Pascal offers his girl a big oak leaf to wipe away the flowing tears, knowing the compassionate lass would breakdown at first questioning.

"Hans was stabbed…? He was dying…?" The dreadful realization hits Anna like a ton of cold bricks. Luckily Kristoff, upon his flying reindeer buddy, was there just the right moment to steady his tipsy Arendelle Princess from falling off the limb she had been perched upon and pull her and a teary Rapunzel onto Sven and Svala's sturdy backs.

"Kristly?" On the verge of tears herself that she couldn't quite explain, Anna buries her face to her man's strong muscular back. Her mind, not prepared at all for this revelation, was racing as fast as the beats of her palpitating heart.

"Is Hans dead already?" Anna, in shocked disbelief and regretful sadness that they would never see that annoying Red of a Danish Prince again, was almost afraid to squeak out the words into Kristoff's tensed shoulder traps. Her radiant heart instantly aches for her sister and how poor Elsa would react to this terrible news, were it true.

"We're going to go find out. Come on Olaf!" Trained tracker plus nature's Wind Whisperer Kristoff scoops up the just reconstituting snowman and plops him onto Svala's back, where Rapunzel and Pascal on her shoulder were already situated.

"Eliana!" Kristoff's determined voice calls out for the snowgirl down below who had been coming around the hillside impatiently in wait for Olaf at their late picnic rendezvous not so far from the Arendelle castle courtyard. "Tell Johanne that we'll be back soon! Just a few days probably! And don't let Elsa or her parents find out that we're gone! Got it?" The Snow Prince orders the intelligent snowgirl as Eliana nods and waves back.

"I'll be back for some snowdling real soon, my Frosty Sugarplum!" Precariously hanging off the flying reindeer above, Olaf sends a wildly waving Eliana a wet blown kiss as he, Sven, Svala, Pascal join the trio of human to rush off right to another adventure.

Throwing caution to the winds, Kristoff takes Anna to race through the clouds to find out the ultimate fate of a previous enemy of her kingdom, and of her own heart, once.

The same man who currently held the love of her sister captive, perhaps now for all time…

* * *

 _Greetings, 'Frozen: Again' Friends!_

 _I hope you all were in a singing mood (unlike our Flynn-er_ _Eugene_ _^^) for this songful chapter! FYI: I scripted the fun lyrics to the pub thugs' newest song, 'Slide that Ring on Her Finger' (that even our medicine-ed up loverboy Hans tossed in his tenor voiced punchline) But to keep the rhythm musically recognizable, I set the lyrics in my rondo revolving head to the catchy old Lerner & Loewe 4/4 signature time tune from 'My Fair Lady' of "Get Me to the Church on Time'.Which is basically a lively raucous barroom chorus melody based on the same marital bliss outcome. ^_^ Have fun singing along!_

 _So we meet with Olaf's girlfriend Eliana in this episode! I'm yet a little vague on her looks and clothing (if any) to describe, but I wanted to start including her into the Frozen Again scene. Olaf could do with a little lovelife, can't he? ^_^ If you've heard any further personality traits attributed to the new snowgirl (or Tangled TV series' 'tough as nails handmaiden/ confidante to Rapunzel, Cassandra as well), do share, please! ^_^ Just trying to keep ahead of the curve!_

 _Even good old Sitron made an appearance with Elsa today! She seems to have embraced Hans' horse as her own. Wonder if he and his original master will get o meet up again..._

 _So, did you enjoy this installment? New plot twists are being laid as, returning to Arendelle, Elsa takes her folks to her_ _Ice_ _Palace_ _and leaves Anna in charge of Arendelle. But when Anna finds out from Rapunzel that Hans was gravely injured and didn't just walk out of Elsa's life of his own volition, that feisty go-getter gal is on the move again to set things right for her forlorn sister!_

 _Stay tuned to see what more excitement lies in store as 'Frozen Again But the Greatest of These is Love' Act V continues!_

 _God bless! Thanks for reading and reviewing!_

 _HarukaKou_


	4. Chapter 4 - I Am My Beloved's

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 4**

 **"I Am My Beloved's and My Beloved Is Mine"**

When the morning sun awakens over the dancing twisting forests of Prussia, the Snuggly Duckling Pub thugs were already abuzz with wedding date excitement.

Although most of the lifelong bachelors had never even entertained the thought of taking on such an enterprisingly questionable endeavor, they would enthusiastically work hard in making the dream a reality for their fellow former criminal brother. Even if his romantic notion led to the frightening step called 'marriage'.

But this much awaited morn that dawned on the Prussian shores not too far inset from Kiel Bay's section of the Baltic Sea was a bit of an overcast one, much to the idealistic natured groom's chagrin.

"Just my luck! That traveling soothsayer forecaster predicted this final day of July to be a beauty! Oh woe is me!" Big Nose decries the cloud covered darkened sky above his negatively shaking head as he gazes forlornly above the twisted trees of Corona's dancing forest.

"Ha! You fell for that old geezer, Big Nose?!" The weaselly puppeteer named Fang snorts after he and several of his rodentia sneeze in unison at the bounty of flowers that Tor and his patched up ulcer managed to artistically set up along the forest lane with sprays of white roses, hydrangea and morning glories.

The big bulging stomach-ed, burnt orange haired brute of a florist rolls his eyes to the heavens when his perfected flower arrangements are unceremoniously sent askew all over the bridal pathway by the hodgepodge of hayfever driven bow-tied ratty entourage on Fang's now disheveled shoulder. When an agitated Tor stands to his full six foot four height from his kneeling position, his dressy shirt, several sizes too tight, follows suit to flip up over his now exposed belly button naval.

"Ohh! This can only happen to me!" Big Nose hangs his head at the disruptive scene, burying his big nose in his hands. The groom was looking quite dapper – as far as a lanky, large nosed awkward man could be called in a stretch – wearing a formal white wedding suit beneath his traditional white robe kittel.

"I guess we weren't all born to look like gorgeous runway models in any fashion." Vain Flynn Rider comments drolly, while recalling mirrors that didn't lie of how fine he looked at his own wedding ceremony some blissfully wed five years back.

"Speak for yourself, T'ief." Maybe Job was picking up the teasing nature of Flynn Rider's bad influence upon him after their time spent together. Or perhaps the tall, muscular Caribbean man, who did truly look quite dashing in this new dressy/chic tunic just his size, that designer Gunther brought to the clinic to share with the injured friend of the Princess, was being serious.

Eugene couldn't be sure, either way, as deadpan Job clears a path through the milling about crowd of people for his svelte trio to pass.

Elder brother Eugene helps a slightly stumbling Hans through the seats towards the gathered group of klutzy Snuggly Duckling attendees and several well wishing Corona citizens, whom the reformed villains had befriended since Rapunzel welcomed them into her kingdom. Looking up to the front canopy covered altar from his choice seat, Eugene smirks. He was glad his fashion sense, if no other advice that passed in their drunken, card-playing revelry last night, had convinced the normally bare, knock-kneed pub thug groom to at least don a decent pair of pants. Skirt armor was not exactly commensurate to a cultured marriage ceremony of this mid-19th century.

But could the Snuggly Duckling men truly pull off a civilized affair like this without incident? Eugene was not going to put his money on it as he glances around this section of the corded-off forest quickly filling up .

"The outdoor reception will be spoiled if it rains! How can my Hildegard and I start out on a happy life with a dark, dreary, foreboding raincloud hanging over us?! Boo-hoo!" The somewhat superstitious Big Nose quite emotionally begins sobbing onto Bruiser's warm comforting shoulder as a tearful eyed Ulf - _Or did the make-up coated pantomime clown always look that brooding, forlorn way?_ \- offers the anxious groom an endlessly long handkerchief from his similarly ill-fitting suit jacket pocket.

"Hey, chill out, Big Nose! Weddings always are a sticky, crazy, chaotic event. Just look at my own with Rapunzel, and we turned out pretty fine. You'll get that happy ending dream you've been searching for, too, no doubt." Biting his wagging silver tongue, Eugene offers. He must've felt quite magnanimous as the only representative of the Crown present, due to King Friedrich's recent poor health and his own sweet, bleeding-heart-for-sadsack-cases Princess' absence.

"Really?" Bucktoothed Big Nose smiles, wiping away his sniffled tears and gratefully looking up to the tall and handsome thief, who was more experienced in such matters.

"It's living up to the expectation afterwards you should be worried about." Eugene, stroking his dark stubbly goatee like a wise old man, just can't help himself from tacking on the snide remark, which flusters poor confused Big Nose to no end.

Big Nose was already upset that his dear friend Princess Rapunzel wouldn't be here to attend his most important day. He and Hilde had already delayed their wedding ceremony as long as possible, awaiting their benefactress. But the Law dictated that a proper Jewish wedding couldn't take place in all of August this year, so this last day of July would be a it for another month!

When asked about Rapunzel and Eugene's tardy whereabouts a week ago, kind Queen Arianna advised the blessed event to continue nonetheless.

The prim woman refused to believe that anything detrimental could have befallen her precious only child again, although she somewhat feared the sea voyage crossing the Skaggerak in the first place. That fierce section of the cruel ocean had claimed her dear little sister Idun away five years before, so pensive Arianna had to convince herself that her daughter and son-in-law had simply and obviously stayed on to visit with their cousin Elsa to strike up a much needed friendship after her little niece Anna's wedding had taken place without problem.

Queen Arianna did wish she could have attended Princess Anna's wedding herself, and see her beloved long-lost sister's child's important celebration firsthand. But her husband Friedrich's weak heart condition and general poor health, that kept the good ruler of Prussia bedridden nowadays, prevented such an extended sea voyage.

The devoted wife was never far from her ailing husband's side. Her great love and worry made the anxious Queen almost too protective and watchful of her Friedrich's condition, lest she lose him, too.

 _But the_ _show must go on, right?_ After Flynn had vividly explained to the Snuggly Duckling crew all the exciting turmoil and adventure that had happened up in Norway involving himself and his own blushing bride, they all concluded that Princess Rapunzel probably would find Big Nose and Hilde's simple outdoor wedding ceremony a tad dull anyway.

Big Nose had to appease his romantic heart with that, especially after all the other Snuggly Duckling guys insisted that only a summer wedding would be counted as lucky. Besides, they were sick of their quixotic and overly romantic friend's sighs and dreamy ranting harangues and moonings over his 'treasured love, Hilde'. By now, they all wanted to get him roped and married and off their hands before they all went stir crazy in their homey tavern.

"My family's travelled all the way from Bavaria to attend this special occasion! They've been here a week already! And for my folks, time is money." Frugal Big Nose grew up in a home full of hard working, money-minded goldsmiths and jewelers in Bavaria. The profession of selling custom made jewelry was the family business specialty that he would often dabble in between stints of jewel fencing incarceration.

Big Nose's sisters and Aged P father came to see their younger brother tie the marital knot at long last with that 'true love' little lady he'd been dreaming of all his life.

And they came to make sure that he would seal the deal with the ornate decorated gold ring his father had personally handcrafted for his mother – _God bless her departed, sainted soul_ -years and years ago, waiting for that special day their only son would do the honors to become a whole man.

"Come on, Big Nose! I bet the storm cloud will pass soon and everything will turn out hunky-dory and sunny-side-up for you and your Hilde-girl on that boat ride we've got planned for the wedding's crescendo." Giving discouraging Flynn a crooked grimace, Hookhand comes barreling towards the anxious groomsman. The musician pushes his trusty piano onto the platform Attila and Gunther had fashioned for the instrument's al fresco concert.

The hunchback pianist runs a short hook down the ivory keys to a jaunty quick jingle of 'Here Comes the Bride' just to make sure his pianoforte was still in tune after he and Vladimir had moved it here to the twisted Dancing forest's wedding location.

Jumping on the closed piano lid, fluttering eyelashed Fang and all his rats embrace Shorty and pretend to be lovers rowing a make-believe rowboat with umbrella oars, in ridicule of the bride and groom.

"Aw, shucks. Don't tease me at my wedding to my true love, boys." An instantly blushing Big Nose causes the several Snuggly Duckling members, all scurrying about to get the outdoor wedding on, to burst into laughter as they lead the nervous groom away.

"A blessed day for true love, indeed." Surveying the giddy scene from afar, Hans Westergaard whispers under his breath with a secret yearning burning in his own heart.

"So, Lillebror… Does all his cheerful festivity make you feel more in the mood to discuss with your big bro anything _special_ you've got planned on your mind?" Flynn Rider glances sideways at the softly spoken words of the redhead Prince.

Hans glances at Eugene, but merely looks away without saying another word with a lost expression. While not quite suffering the hangover headache Eugene was enduring, the Danish Prince had been fairly silent all morning.

Eugene had finally obtained that high proof, copiously endless glass of whiskey after a _fair_ game of poker with Shorty and the gang at that late hour after he returned to the bar last night. Upon return to their shared loft, the overhung man had found his little brother pondering in the early morn, staring longingly outside the Snuggly Duckling attic window at an unattainable daybreak.

So, thinking that Hans could use some social company, his big brother, though loathe to join in himself, decided to roust out the depressed young man to attend the festive wedding going on just beyond the river by the mysteriously twisted trees of the glen.

Eugene himself had considered going home to his castle in Corona pick up some fresh clothes first.

 _'My Castle in_ _Corona_ _'. Gee, that sounds stupendous._ The half tipsy man mused with puffed up pride, until his throbbing head pounded in his woozy skull something fierce again.

The new shirt Rapunzel had picked out for him in Salsbrucket, however stylish Flynn Rider looked in it, was rather dirt stained and sweat stenched, his one thinning pair of sleek pants starting to reek with embedded white horse hair, but the thought of returning to his said castle in Corona in this state under Queen Ari's critical, questioning eye early in the morning wasn't all that inviting for the hung-over man.

 _Maybe I'll just give them a quick rinse in the tub._

"How are you feeling, Hans old buddy?"

"Doin' all right, Pal?"

"Lookin' slick, Hans!"

"Don't let that stupid brother of yours push you around, Kiddo!"

Several of the pub thugs call out solicitudes and give thumbs-up to their new friend as they walk by. The pub thugs were busy setting up for the wedding as they greet Hans with warmth and caring for his welfare whenever they passed, without giving Eugene as much as a fleeting glance. Hans calmly nods back with a noble smile to his new companions.

 _Damn! How did you still manage to come up smelling like a rose, looking debonair no matter what you wear, and beloved by all, Lillebror? Old Bruiser and Killer seem to not only have spiffed and shaved and spiced you up squeaky clean, but they also seem to have found the time to fully wash and press_ _your_ _Navy jacket and white naval issue slacks until they look bleached and sparkly new! How those magicians can even remove blood's most persistent stained, I'll never know. And since your fascinating song and dance number last night, I believe you have endeared these ruffians to have taken a real shine to you, Sideburns._

 _All our years together and they still they never give me a 'how do you do'. That's gotta hurt._

Not only a little jealous, Eugene ponders these weightless thoughts to himself as he turns to scan charmer Hans Westergaard's neatly shaven, sideburns carefully intact, svelte figure after glancing dismayed to survey his own disheveled, heavily 5 o'clock shadow form that no one seemed to care a wit about here.

"Okay… Since we've been unwittingly dropped into this happy occasion… As older brother I do feel the need to perhaps…converse…with you on a tender subject, Lillebror…" After clearing his throat, Eugene was just sidling into the touchy topic that was burning a hole in Hans' jacket's secret pocket.

 _I checked it was still there this morning, Handsome. Can't be too careful when waking up in the den of thieves…_

The self-described petty pilferer settles Hans into his mid-row seat with Job's helpful hand, behind Hildegard's old mother and little brother and several of her friends from the village. Ulf the mime had spent the morning positioning and repositioning the chairs under the artistic eyes of Gunther the exterior designer. They had placed the audience chairs in front of the chuppah canopy and hung the white talus prayer shroud blessed by the Rabbi that the boys would hold up for the traditional Jewish wedding.

Just then, startling several of the guests, and making a questioning Eugene jump, Hookhand begins to loudly play a stirring interpretation of the recently composed " _Treulich geführt_ " ("Bridal Chorus" in German), from Richard Wagner's new opera Lohengrin.

The drab sky amazingly clears a bit as the Prussian Jew Rabbi leads Big Nose the bridegroom and Killer, who would be the high-pitched cantor today at the ceremony, down the greenery path into the canopy. Ulf, Bruiser, Tor and Vladimir had been assigned to hold the white prayer shroud high up over the marriage ceremony taking place inside the canopy.

With the somewhat uneven, gauche, big musclemen involved, it was all little shaky at first. But the four men finally managed to put together in artistic celebration for their friend.

While the Rabbi goes through reading the names of the couple written on the marriage document both signed and then directs them outlined the room and the responsibility for and to his bride, Big Nose looked about ready to explode.

But once Aged P leans over his genetically large nosed similar face to lift the bride's veil and kiss her blushing cheek with a smile, the look that crossed the ancient old man's one-eye squint that had constantly been attached to a jeweler's magnification tool all his life, causes Big Nose to finally breathe.

"You have picked a brilliant gem of the first water, son." Using high-quality language for a gemstone, the gold and jewel expert Aged P's crumpled over form uses his cane to bat on his son's arm proudly, as he gives Hilde an approving toothy grin.

"Don't I know it… _Sigh_ …" Big Nose goes all googly eyed and practically drooling over his demurely smiling bride who was game enough to wear his signature brass helmet and medieval long sword at her white robe belt side, as per the Prussian Jewry tradition of the day.

After all, that helmet was instrumental in how the couple first met and fell in love at first sight.

"Now it's time to join and drink wine together before the groom's presentation of the ring to his new bride." The heavily accented Rabbi claps twice and brings Big Nose back down to reality, awakening his best man Shorty at the same time.

"I do!" The small drunk immediately starts to where he had been leaning a-snooze against a nearby tree, twisted like a pretzel, just in this glen of the dancing twisted forest. Shorty's right hand was holding out the large gold band in all its intricately engraved glory with delicate gold overlays and filigree. His drunken left appendage was reaching to take the wine goblet away from the disgruntled Rabbi.

The Jewish religious leader purses his lip irritably as he tries to continue in his duty of invoking the prayer over the blessed wine to present to the groom. But the old drunk was persistent, as the red fruit of the vine splashes about all the white clothing in the struggle. That is, until Hookhand abruptly ceases his stirring piano playing to toss his golden hook across the room at a cupcake tray wielding Attila, who at once stomps across the room to squarely bash a produced frying pan down on the misbehaving Shorty's flattened head.

"You got me." Comes the conceding wobbly legged man's inebriated last words before he puts up his guilty hands that had already pocketed the big gold ring. Then he sinks backward into that _tall glass of ice water_ sculpture of a lifelike, voluptuous winged angel Gunther had created for the wedding.

Luckily Fang and his crew of rats were right there to rifle through and snatch back the concealed ring out from Shorty's torn apart shabby suit clothes as the old crook continues to rest in the lovely ice sculpted woman's melting arms.

"Ah, good old frying pan memories." Flynn whistles low with the nostalgic comment, unbothered by the madness. Hans, on the other hand, takes in the disturbing scene with a nervous chuckle at his brother's side sitting in the audience.

"Speaking of more recent memories after those doctors had undressed you… Boy, do I know a secret about you, Kid." A smirking wickedly, heavy-lidded Eugene leans over his excruciatingly thin and wiry lean younger brother's shoulder to conspiratorially whisper in Hans' instantly red shocked ear.

"To… _what_ are you referring to, Storbror?" Mortified under Flynn's wicked implicating smirk, wide-eyed Hans gulps at the degrading insinuation of his vulnerable, exposed anatomy before scrutinizing eyes at the operation yesterday.

"Just a _little_ _something_ interesting we found on your person." Flynn, like every other male ever born to a family of boys, seemed to enjoy making his little brother squirm. "Don't worry, I put it back, just as we found it. Hakuna matata."

"Storbor! Is it not—a-a-a crime—here in Corona to… _rifle_ …through a-a-nother man's private possessions? Hardly the act of gentlemen when a man is unconscious and defenseless!" Astonished Hans, after dismissing any other debased meaning, uncharacteristically stumbles over his heated whispers, his hand automatically darting to the sword hilt affixed to his side for steely comfort.

"Yeah, maybe. But the laws don't apply to us here, Sideburns. We're a load of crooks and ruffians, down in these parts. Not proper gents. No secret off-limits stuff flies here for long. So get used to it, Handsome." Flynn gives in to the fact with a shrug in Hans' appalled face as the Danish Prince hastily places his long fingers into his jacket interior. Not trusting Eugene implicitly, as no one should, Hans feels around for that expensive piece of fine jewelry of his own specified design that he had sunk most of his decade-long Naval service salary into in hopes for a favorable outcome. He sighs audibly in both relief and disappointment to find it yet present and unoffered to his heart's desire.

"Now, pay attention here, Lillebror. You might pick up a few pointers of how our bad habits and unrefined, uncouth and un-obscured around-the-beaten-bush pluck could land you an icy prize beyond measure." Mature married man Eugene Fitzherbert, while sliding in a life's lesson in there somewhere, redirects his red-in-the-face and down-in-the-mouth younger brother's attention back to the blissful, if not flat-out insane, wedding scene.

 _But who doesn't play the fool when it comes to love?_ Eugene's own mind wanders to his Blondie now Brownie _liebling_ as he mildly focuses back on this ceremony's happenings.

* * *

"Thanks, Fang." Big Nose quietly says in gratitude when the pointy-toothed pub thug gives up the fancy gold family heirloom over to its rightful owner. But not without himself and each of the dozen rats on his head, neck and shoulders salivating at the jackpot of a real gold and diamond encrusted ring.

"Ahem, yes thank you, Mister… Fang." The upright holy Rabbi tries to ignore the iron skillet smashing violence, drunken ring bearer, and ill-mannered wedding guests. Not to mention the rodents. He continues on with the ceremony nonetheless by handing first Big Nose, then to Hildegard, the consecrated wine that each partakes from the same goblet in drinking.

Big Nose, with a proud smile to his Aged P, then slips the ornate gold band that belonged to his mother on the young woman's ring finger. This special ring represented the wholeness that two separate people achieved by their marriage and the hope for an unbroken union future to come.

 _"Harei atah mekudah li."_

"Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring, according to the laws of Moses and Israel." Big Nose speaks the Hebrew words that made their covenant implicit in the ritual of the groom placing a ring on his bride's finger, without an actual exchange of vows beyond this short phrase in the traditional Jewish ceremony.

Before the Rabbi under God, Big Nose secures the marriage vow when and says:

 _"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li."_

"I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." The hopeless romantic says the holy pledge with a lump in his throat.

 _"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li."_

"I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." And Hildegard, beaming from ear to ear, follows suit. Declaring her wedding pledge reply that would now and forever seal the deal, the young Prussian girl had memorized the traditional Hebrew marital phrase that could be no more beautifully stated.

She and her dearest Big Nose exchange a sweet true love kiss, making this pub thug, who had a dream for romance, to reign supreme and complete.

 _"Mazel Tou!"_ As one, the crowd lifts their multitude of voices to shout the congratulatory Hebrew sentiment that Aged P began to sing out. The proud father and his children lead in the Jewish glass breaking tradition that symbolized the destruction of the temple and a man's short life on earth even amidst the happy occasion where sorrow and death could not be forsaken.

With all the raucous smashing of glass, and then cake in Big Nose's face by Hilde going on, the jolly pub thugs continue to torment an obstinately unsympathetic Flynn Rider by throwing their glasses at the subjugated man to again dance for their amusement. A nonplussed, cross-armed, stoic Job and distant-eyed, softly thoughtful Hans look on from the laughing, clapping and highly entertained audience.

And just in time, the sun starts to peek through the storm clouds for Big Nose and his special little lady in their rowboat down the stream to be launched by the rowdy, noisy, and disorderly Snuggly Duckling gang who really meant well. The guys were still singing and dancing and cavorting around with the victimized Eugene at the center of it all to send their pal off.

Down the stream Hilde waves back as a blissful Big Nose was rowing his gondola in his _yichud_ \- seclusion of togetherness for honeymooners - as all their wedding guests hooray and applaud the happy scene.

But those in the cheering crowd could not be aware that there was a dark hooded man with a dark purpose lurking not so far away in the dark shadows of Prussia's twisted Dancing forest, portending some of that sorrow to arrive far sooner than anyone expected…

* * *

 _Hundreds of miles to the north of eastern_ _Prussia_ _'s shores, at the crystalline ice peaked Palace beyond Arendelle's_ _North_ _Mountain_ _…_

Once the royal entourage had arrived at the frozen Palace, Kai and Gerda had ushered the others into the rear, multiple fireplace heated kitchen wing and cabin section that Kristoff and his mountain men colleagues had built for the Queen's second Palace last summer. The Ice Palace addition served as the servant's comfortable workplace and quarters in this perpetually frozen cold North mountain region, mainly so Anna could come and stay with her sister up here for their getaway summer vacations.

With Kai and Gerda and the others busy at the task of setting up their many volunteer workers' stations and living quarters, Elsa was left to care for her astonished parents.

There was a lot of explaining to do as she introduced King Agdar and Queen Idun to some works of her icy genius, especially after the frighteningly monstrous tall Marshmallow had opened the huge set of curvilinear designed doors and greeted the startled royal couple to the Ice Palace.

"So… What you think?" All a-tingle with anticipating excitement, Elsa wasn't exactly ice fishing for compliments. But after her royal parents had taken in, wide-eyed, Elsa's imposingly pristine white, tall spired Ice Palace as it loomed closer to their horse-drawn carriage, since they first stepped inside, both her mother and father had been conspicuously silent.

Neither staggered Agdar nor stunned Idun had added much more than a gasp or thought provoked murmur or two as their bedazzled eyes drank in their daughter's palatial ice architecture creation.

"I think… No, I always knew…that you were born to be an artist, min spadbarns." The Queen Mother pauses at the ornamental columned hallway entrance, looking up in awe at the spiraled staircase of Elsa's own unique design. The ice arcade was lined with breathtaking icicle drop chandelier fixtures, marbleized verglas ice floors and delicate snowflake encrusted stained-glass windows beneath a brilliant blue white oculus skylight at the ornate palace's vaulted ultimate peak.

"Wouldn't you agree, my love?" With a warm smile, Queen Idun breaks the proverbial ice at last as she squeezes Elsa's hand before tearing her eyes away from the glorious sight of architectural beauty to look up to her King.

Agdar was leaning on his wife's arm for more than just physical support as he was wandering around in shock, to survey this wondrous Ice Palace's entire spectrum during Elsa's lip bitten grand tour before he was prepared to justify his reply.

"Simply breathtaking, my Snow Angel. You never cease to amaze me with your innate ability and creative magnificence." The speechless King Agdar finally says quite eloquently, as he gazes from the reflective marble floor to the Ice Palace's starburst cathedral ceiling with delicate hanging chandeliers and exquisitely decorated spiral staircase in between that was almost magically floating in midair suspension.

The King was impressed truly not only at the beauty but also at the architectural perfection played in Elsa's handiwork. The finely crafted, yet strong ice balcony was a work of art in itself to the man who studied structural design in his fascination with shipbuilding youth. And there was even more to discover with every step into the attached glorious upper rooms that were adorned with a million little ice created detail that only a genuine artist would appreciate to include.

Agdar slowly moves on his reinstated legs through the tall, lunette window, glazed glass ice double doors that were so delicate and thin yet so symmetrical they were balanced perfectly to function faultlessly. Out onto the balcony of his Elsa's Ice Palace, King Agdar gazes in awe over the entire frozen vista of the North Mountain location to where his kingdom of Arendelle in the far smoky distance lay far below.

"We are well proud of you, Elsa." There were tears of pure admiration in his gleaming icy eyes when Agdar finally turns around to address his remarkable daughter.

"Thank you, Papa, Mama." Those tears were reflected quickly in Elsa's shimmering blue orbs as the unsure girl finally finds recognition and acceptance from her cherished parents of her rare gifts, once shunned.

"Such immense control and genius it must have taken to mentally conjure the structuring in your mind and use your vast cryokinetic powers to accomplish such breathtaking construction. Your creativity has far exceeded anything I could ever achieve." Her father's overwhelmed senses were full of utmost admiration as he takes an assertive, rather than a cautious step towards Elsa, coming back in from the balcony ledge, and his weak legs at normal stride falter for him to grab the edge of the parapet nearby.

"Papa!" Elsa was just about to rush to her father's side but his extended hand halts her as he continues to stubbornly hobble forward from the upper chamber towards the icy staircase landing.

"Truly you are more fit to be Arendelle's monarch. I am glad, since I am declining in my old age." With a cold northern wind whistled through his chilled heart, a wanly smiling Agdar says in a rather depressed state after he is barely able to stand on his own two legs, let alone stride across the room and walk back down that tall flight of winding stairs without Idun's balance or Elsa' ice projected assistance that purveyed him up here to the second floor in the first place.

"Papa!" As the King's new leg almost gives out, Elsa uses a bit of her ice magic to bolster him up as the disgruntled at himself King lets out a grunted sigh to slump down upon the slippery ice staircase's top step.

Elsa cries inside see her once robust and vital parent so easily give up. Before, in their childhood days, Elsa and Anna's Papa could do anything, uncomplainingly happy to provide for his sheltered family. From hands-on household chores like replacing a broken window little Anna threw rocks through; teaching his difficult eldest child to dance a waltz and shoot skeet until Elsa was fluidly proficient in both; chopping down and bringing in to set up almost single-handedly a humongous Christmas tree that the girls would take turns with their Mama in decorating; or carrying heavy trunks of clothing he had brought home from the naval yard to his trio of lassies to explore the exotic fashions thereof.

Papa could even wrangle a stable full of horses he fully enjoyed the singular responsibility of grooming, re-shoeing and exercising, with only a limited number of servants permitted in Arendelle Kingdom's self-imposed seclusion over that lonely decade.

And now to hear her Papa so lackluster in energy and distraught of spirit, King Agdar's attitude disheartened his little girl who still yearned to look up to him for strength.

"Is that so, decrepit old man? At the ripe old age of two and forty, you don't sound at all like that foolish young hero who was so full of himself to prove to the world he could do anything he set his mind to do. Where is that gallant and strong, cocky Norwegian crown Prince who wanted to show off his remarkable magic ice prowess to impress a starry eyed young girl of sixteen? Hmm?" Queen Idun had just had enough of her husband's wallowing in self doubt that had again crept into the bitter cold ice he allowed now to swim freely about his heart, unrestricted in this cold Ice Palace setting.

"Have times changed so much? You wished to teach Elsa self-control of her unmanageable ice? I think your daughter could teach _you_ a few things about the self-confidence it takes to reach high goals. That is a much more significant tenet to learn, your Majesty, before you waste away to senility. Now get up off your high horse and be my King." With a touch stopping Elsa from using her powers further to levitate her dejected father, Idun knew her man inside and out well enough to recognize when he needed to be mentally coddled and even more necessary when he required to be verbally spanked.

Agdar loved Idun as his own soul, to take it just exactly as his beloved meant it. When he looks up through the ice clouding his mind to the beautiful clear warmth of hers kneeling down to encapsulate his translucent icy eyes, Idun lands a puffed white breath kiss on her love's needy lips in support for his first day of training.

"Yes, my Queen." King Agdar bows his head to his love's sovereignty. With new purpose, the Ice King focuses his mind to use his swirling ice powers inside to cryo-reinforce his own legs enough to walk down the challenging slippery and winding steps again without faltering, albeit slower and more purposefully this time.

The confused Marshmallow down below at ground-level was watching all the while the human drama. At Elsa's command, the snow monster was standing by, fully prepared to catch should Papa's step go amiss.

"There. Lesson number one. 'Put your foot down'. Papa will be fine if we leave him alone now to process my request. Your first step in learning how to deal with men on their stubborn days, my darling." Re-wrapping the warm woolen stole about her shoulders victoriously, Idun squeezes an arm around her nervously chuckling star pupil as the perfectly composed little mother strolls arm in arm with her daughter.

Idun was already planning when she would be ready to teach inexperienced Elsa lesson number two: 'Make them come begging for more'. Her elder daughter's tentative relationship with a certain handsome Prince who she let get away, may require that particular lesson sooner than later.

"While Papa digests that tutorial, let's you and I have some fun, Elsa. There is so much we have to talk about! And I can't wait to see your ice fashion show that Anna was speaking of. You have quite a tall and lissome figure, young lady, to let go to waste." The fashionable mother says with high regard approbation for her elegant child's graceful style. "We'll change you into something more comfortable than that constricting dress and tight bun hairstyle. Something more befitting the Ice Queen who is mistress here in her glorious Ice Kingdom."

"But Papa probably won't like–" The somewhat intimidated, and a little dejected, young Queen of two kingdoms starts to rebut her mother's tempting offer of the freedom to be more herself in her own habitat.

"Papa has a lot to learn about compartmentalizing his raging emotions, my big girl. That is a large part of what we brought him up here to teach." At least, in this chilled environment, the Ice King could focus on learning to control and figure out how best to utilize the icy magic running rampantly through his veins. Rather than constantly worrying of body overcompensation in the natural heat of summer weather conditions, as he would have to down in Arendelle Valley.

* * *

"All right, sir. My Elsa created you as well? And a more exemplary job she did of it too, rather than that sorry excuse for a meager snowman I have already encountered. You and I must make proper introductions." Watching his wife and daughter disappear into Elsa's Ice Palace bedroom in the corner of his pale blue eye, Agdar begins to address the gigantic snow monster left to babysit the Ice King's slow journey down the winding staircase.

Agdar pauses to look at the icy snow creation's white mass. He was impressed by Marshmallow's size and volume density, if not the silly name unbefitting the creature's potency as Agdar had overheard Elsa address the gargantuan snow creature earlier.

"How is it you were given such a foolish moniker anyway, Snow Beast? I will have to talk to your illustrious mistress about that inadequate misnomer." An unruffled King Agdar calmly addresses the sixty foot tall snow creature as if it were normal conversation with another human being at his stature level.

"And I'll have that tiara/crown from your head, Snow Beast. It belongs to the nation's monarch alone." The authoritative figure of a King, acting again like he should, holds out his ice blue white hand expectantly demanding with a pursed lip beneath his debonair mustache.

"Hmm? Ahh." Deeply bellowing, Marshmallow had become accustomed to his shiny gold little prize that he found after all the drama was over. His creator Queen Elsa had, in a moment of rebellious anger, thrown this Arendelle crown across her newly formed Ice Palace and she didn't have the heart to take it back from her faithful servant yet.

"Thank you." Now at the ground level of the staircase's open westwork expanse, where the entrance vestibule surmounted into the large room opening of the nave's marble ice floor, Agdar was just about to accept the feminine crown into his hand from the berated and browbeaten Snow Beast ten times his scale size. That's when a sudden horde of hundreds of mystically stacked snowballs reach up to his 6 foot two tall arm level.

"What manner of madness caused my dear girl to create the likes of you? And why so many…?" A curious, amused Agdar wonders aloud with a crooked smile at the multitude of pattering feet snowgies that emerged from every nook and cranny corner of the spartanly furnished Ice Palace vestibule. There, each hidden snowgie of frozen boundless energy had been hiding in inquisitive wait to spring upon this new and interesting arrival unannounced.

The Ice King's curiosity increases when he kneels to the ice marbleized floor to inspect the mute creatures more closely. Hundreds of playful snowgies swarm around him to likewise investigate the fascinating newcomer with an icy aura in bouncing enthusiasm as their kicked up snowdust tickles his nose—

 _Ah-choo!_

* * *

 _Somewhere between Arendelle's North mountain and_ _Corona_ _'s Dancing forest 500 miles to the southeast…_

"Hmm? Huh? Isn't your chest exceptionally hairy tonight, Kristly? Mmmm…Can you get me some milk and cookies? Those snowman shaped cinnamon graham ones would be yummy…" In a morning hungry, sleepy delirium, Anna Bjorgman opens her groggy eyes to only find, in a panic, that she was in the middle of an empty place that she never seen before and not basking in the warmth of her new hubby's bare chest.

"Everyone's lost, except me…" The orangey caramel haired Princess shivers at the unhappy thought of being a small child again in Arendelle Castle's many vacant rooms wandering about in search of a nonexistent friend.

"Homn?" Svala's dry reindeer nose tickles Anna's lonely cheek where the girl had been slumbering upon the lying prone female reindeer's back.

"Svala! Sven! You're here too!" Relieved to not be without a friend, a disoriented Anna had pulled the resting, knelt down reindeer she was lying across with a blanket laid atop her. Sitting up and stretching her arms out, Anna rubs the sleepers from her eyes as she abruptly recalls just why she might wake up in some unfamiliar place.

"Hans…" The tentative young woman reflects upon the unsettling revelation her cousin Rapunzel had unveiled before. The idea that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles may be already dead, distressed Anna of Arendelle more than she cared to admit, even to herself. Because the true heart in Anna knew how the tragic news of his demise would play havoc in her beloved sister Elsa's blossoming love.

Knowing that her quiet, reserved and thoughtful big sister as she has come know again so closely, Princess Anna saw that, for whatever reason, even against her own better judgment in allowing it, Elsa had fallen in love. And Anna was just as certain that in losing that elusive and complex mystery of this life called 'Love', Elsa's fragile heart may never recover again.

So, as devoted little sister and best friend, Anna would move heaven and earth to try to prevent that double tragedy from unfolding. Even if it meant bringing one Hans Westergaard back into Elsa's life, alive and well. That was honestly the only solution that Anna could come up with to heal her sister's broken heart.

 _I am going to find out what happened to that stupid Hans! And if he's not dead, and that Red just ran away…I'll kill him for hurting my Elsie!_

Her own thoughts ever indecisive as to her actions pertaining that certain redheaded Westergaard, a distracted Anna jumps to her feet. The blanket over her slides off and falls down upon a moving lump of something alive unknown on the strange barn ground.

Putting on a brave face, Anna doesn't shy away or run. Instead she kicks the living lump nearby where both tired flying Rangifers were resting until it rolls further away, wholly wrapped up in the obscured blanket.

"Whoa, dizzy! I'll have some extra frosting on those yummy cookies Elsa baked, Anna!" Olaf's muffled voice comes out as he tries to untangle himself from the blanket he was covered up in, his gangly stick arms protruding.

"Oops. Sorry, Olaf!" Just then, suddenly the ginger hair on the back of Anna's neck stands up when she had the disquieting feeling that she was being watched.

"Olaf!" Frozen in place as her eyes dart around, Anna's urgent whisper awaken the blissfully sleeping rather intimately snuggled close together Sven and Svala to stir from the restful repose, their furry heads shooting up at her alarm.

"Olaf, Get up! Get up! We're being watched! Where is that Kristoff?" Now fully aware of her surroundings, an indignant panicked girl realizes that she and Olaf had been left asleep atop the reindeer in some unfamiliar stable barn on a bed of sweet smelling hay, with Kristoff and Rapunzel both missing.

Her heightened senses knew that some strangers peeking in the barn peephole at her might be the culprits to explain where her husband and cousin had disappeared off to.

Anna shakes the back to snoring, out-cold snowman from the blanket until his heavy, dizzy eyelids flutter open at last.

 _YAWN!_ "Anna!" Olaf announces his morning greeting as jubilantly loud as always, forgetting that he'd just been kicked around already. But he is halted by Anna clamping a shushing hand over the snowperson's single tooth mouth.

"Shh! Olaf! We're being watched!" Anna stiffly projects her forced voice behind her falsely smiling teeth.

"Oh!" The scatterbrained snowman vociferously calls out when he spies the many multiple pairs of eyes peering through the barn door knotholes, looking at them just as startled.

"We're being _watched_!" Whispering now, big black eyes dilate as wide as possible as Olaf follows Anna's determined gaze. But it was a little too late to be convincing that he was surreptitiously unaware of the half dozen pairs of eyes blinking back at them.

"Okay, Olaf. Here's the plan. You do our rolling snowball B maneuver over to the left side door and I'll be ready with this pitchfork here for the incoming attack with Sven and Svala as my backup crew."

'Born ready' Anna of Arendelle stealthily moves forward after the strategically barked whisper to her snowman compatriot. With one nimble, inconspicuous hand, she reaches out for the hay-gathering farm tool leaning again the empty stall when she gives Olaf a tapped nose signal to prepare to –

 _B maneuver! Go!_ Taking a deep breath, Anna's purposeful fingers signal to her snowbound friend, who knocks himself purposely apart. Olaf then performs the pit maneuver that game-on Anna had trained her eager snowman partner to accomplish during their many competitive snowball fights versus Kristoff and Sven.

The dissembled snowman rolls his three low grounded snowmounds under the radar until he is down directly at the barn door. Reconstituting back to his full four foot plus tall height, Olaf salutes to Anna of his readiness to pull open the barn door latch handle that he could just reach up to on his snow shoe tiptoes.

Pitchfork swiftly secured in hand as she tips her head to Olaf to open the door, able-and-willing-to-defend-herself Anna courageously rushes towards the shore as Olaf swings the door open wide—

"Eeek!" Six tiny little boys, of all shapes and sizes, squeak out in terror at a stunned Anna who looks quite dangerous and bloodthirsty with the sharp pointed weapon raised in her charging hands.

Anna stops just short of the doorway skewering when she sees the scared silly children frozen in place.

"Hey!"

One chubby curly brown-haired child closest to the door, mistakenly wrenches off and grabs up one of Olaf's sticking out snowball feet to chuck the vicious snowball right at Anna's head with perfect aim.

Quickly ducking from years of snow play practice, Anna is just narrowly missed, as Olaf's foot is catapulted and sent to smash high up and into the far dark corner of the unfamiliar barn stall.

"Little boys? Hey! We won't hurt you!" Anna, upon seeing their terror-stricken faces, immediately drops the devilishly creepy pitchfork to clatter to the barn floor boards as she races out the opened barn door. Blinking against the temporarily blinding sunlight in chase of the screaming away children, Anna pauses to catch her breath, leaning on her knees to watch the boys one by one jump into a nearby river they had been swimming in.

"Oh!" One of the smaller children with short stubbly legs that didn't make it to the riverbank with the other retreating boys, skids to a stop. He trips on a rock in the open courtyard near the river trail that led to another brick building with a Christian cross at the Clerestory pinnacle of its roof peak.

"A convent school?" Anna muses to herself after reading an engraved plaque affixed to the edge of the story overhang on the building up ahead. She looks at the Renaissance style edifice not too far away up and down, realizing that the little boys were students here probably having a lunch break from their swimming lesson on the other end of the riverbank.

When she catches up to the seven-year-old child, Anna kneels down to see the he was hurt bad. The shy boy shrinks back away from her touch, but boisterous Anna knew how to handle that.

"That's just a little scratch. I've had worse ones! Like that time when I was eight and my sled stopped short when I hit an un-iced patch. I went skidding the rest of the way down the hill on my cheek! It was a bloody mess, I'll tell you that! And it hurt! Wow! But I couldn't wait to get back out sledding the moment Mama and Papa would let me again. My name's Anna. What's yours?" Just like a ray of sunshine, Anna's smile disarms the sniffling scared boy to look up into the storytelling of her inviting blue-green eyes.

"Lukas. Lukas Rigborg. My Mama Daphne is working hard to bring me to France where she is working as the ladies maid for royalty. She sent me to this charity school because we don't have enough money yet and my old grandmother's close friends with one of the nuns here. Did you know that Mother Superior was sent here from the big Castle when she was a little child too?" The inquisitive minded, talkative seven-year-old opens up as Anna digs into her pocket for a handkerchief to clean up that skinned-knee wound she unwittingly caused.

"Well, Lukas, that is one impressive snowball arm you've got there. I bet you don't mind a little manly pain since you are braver and tougher than all the other chicken boys put together. You've got a lot of guts to throw a wild snowball at some crazy braided madwoman attacking with a pitchfork." Winking at him as she pulls her own braids and sticks out her distracting tongue, Anna had truly a compassionate and friendly soul. The Norwegian Princess smiles at the poor boy as she ties the makeshift bandage around his bloody wound with a nifty tourniquet around it.

"There! Good as new! Just like Mama would fix my boo-boos for me! Oh! I have to sing Mama's song to make it all better!" Anna recalls how many times Queen Idun had delightfully harmonized over her clumsy child's cuts and scrapes and bruises.

" _Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!"_ Anna's lilting sweet soprano mimics her mother's melodious tone as she strokes the boy's cocoa hair in a motherly fashion that caused both lonely children to become tearful for the memories.

"Does it hurt too bad?" The field nurse with the ginger hair helps the wobbly lipped boy up to his feet.

"Nah. Just, my Mama used to sing me that when I was a little kid, too. But I'm a grown-up tough guy now. I'll be providing for her soon." Lukas answers, jutting out his plump chin as he pretends to be older than he was.

"Yeah! Me too! Tough guys are the best sort, aren't we?" Wiping the sentimental tear from her eye, thinking how lucky she was to have her own dear Mama back home waiting for her again, Anna agrees wholeheartedly. She dusts off her own grass-stained skirt and leaps up from the gravelly path with a bounce to her step.

"So, Miss Anna. Are you one of the unmarried royal ladies come to be our new teacher nun, too?" Suddenly trying to figure out who this girl was, no longer shy Lukas brushes an errant strand of brownish hair from his blue eyes. He ignores his aching knee to walk beside the pretty young lady who took time to care of him.

"No. I'm no nun! And never a teacher!" Anna giggles at the thought of ragamuffin, wild, loud, and nutty her being either an orderly, soft-spoken and devout sister of the church or an intellectual and strict school marm.

"I just recently got married. My guy is here, somewhere. Kristoff must've gone into your school to find out where we are and left me sleeping peacefully in your barn after a long ride with my flying reindeer and talking snowman." Anna says honestly as she and little Lukas walk hand-in-hand back towards the barn section of this four wing complex of the Lutheran convent Anna's eyes were curiously scanning.

"Flying reindeer… And a talking snowman?!" Lukas' beady eyes on his chubby cheeked face bulge out at the outlandish suggestions that so candidly spill from this interesting older girl's mouth.

"Oh sure! Come in the barn and I'll introduce you to Sven, Svala and Olaf. My sister's the Ice Queen up where I live in Norway and my new husband is the Snow Prince. He can talk to animals and shoot golden arrows and do all kinds of cool things. Magical stuff happens up there all the time." Anna calmly explains as if these people and abilities were everyday occurences.

The no longer limping in his excitement Lukas was now racing back into the barn.

"Wow! I always dreamed to go to Norway to see reindeer and if the Snow Queen really existed like the story books say!" The pudgy youngster clasps his hands together when he catches sight of Sven and Svala, already on their feet and complacently munching on some sweet hay stalks.

The jaded pair of reindeer give the excited child a somewhat bored look.

"Sven, Svala, say hello to my new friend Lukas. Lukas Rigborg. Lukas, this is Sven and Svala." Anna introduces the boy to the male and female rangifer who each snort back in unimpressed greeting as they continue to chew.

"Olaf? Olaf?! Where are you!? Come meet Lukas!" Anna smiles in an almost proud, motherly way down the brown haired lad.

 _Hey, this is good practice for when my kransekake cake promise comes true. Right, Kristly?_

The Arendelle Princess reminisces of the Norwegian tradition of the spiral ring cake that predicted how many children would offspring from her union with her studly Snow Prince Kristoff Bjorgman.

"I can't!" Olaf's voice rings from somewhere high up in the rafters of the high ceiling-ed stable barn.

"Why not? Where are you?" Anna calls up to him, perplexed as she shrugs to the boy.

"Because I can't find my other foot! I've looked EVERYWHERE! I'm never going to walk straight again! Boo-hoo!" A panicked Olaf was close to tears to be so long parted from one of his missing few body parts.

"Oh, poor Olaf!" Anna fully sympathizes with the freaking out snowman. "Sven! Svala! Come on, Lukas! This will be fun! Like a treasure hunt! Let's go help Olaf find his foot that you threw away with that big strong arm of yours!" The chummy Princess who got along well with all kids, squeezes Lukas' somewhat squishy plump bicep that had slung Olaf's snowball foot so fast and hard against the school stable's back wall that it got away.

"Time to go and play! Follow me on Sven!" Never losing her shine, Anna's childlike mischievous eyes twinkle at her reindeer pal as she hops up on Svala's back and the pair tread air through the expansive stable.

"Whee!" Lonely child Lukas laughs a happy sound as Sven in turn scoops up the small boy and airlifts a bit off the barn floor to zoom across the still air to the thrilled child's delight.

As the two pairs of reindeer and giddy riders glide through the open barn in search of Olaf's runaway appendage, Lukas' keen eyes finally spy the white snowball he had thrown earlier, trembling in confused fear.

Right in the vicinity of the direction he had thrown it, Lukas locates the snowball that had flown over a newly constructed partition between the reinforced barn roof that led to a blocked off royal stable part of the original Bishop's palace stable this convent had been built upon on the other side of a high high shelf entablature.

Problem was, neither Sven nor Svala could find a way through to that closed off stall to retrieve Olaf's foot. They fly up as close to the boarded up area's slight opening.

So, what's a feistypants Princess to do? Olaf's trembling footie was bouncing back and forth on that high shelf in anticipation as Anna reaches out for it, but just couldn't stretch that far.

"If I hold onto you, Lukas, you think you can reach Olaf's silly snowball foot?" Anna asked, judging that only required a few more inches to secure from someone who had smaller framed shoulders to fit through the enclosed superstructure.

"You bet." Without a second thought, the brave little lad fearlessly steps out onto Sven's wide forehead as Anna transfers herself to grab onto Sven's single antler with one hand and Lukas' extended plump paw in the other…

 _STRETCH!_

Between three of the reaching out human/reindeer chain, the snowball foot is able to get a running start to hop across Lukas' pudgy arm and across Anna's head, onto Sven's back and finally over to Svala, who flies down with it to comfort a weeping snowman balling for his lost part.

"All right! We got it! Good job, Lukas! Let's go!" Anna congratulates her new little buddy with pride. But a small brown leather booklet still on that shelf was calling to him –

 _I can reach it! Maybe there's a treasure map in it, and I'll find buried treasure for my Mama!_

"Ahh! Help me!" Lukas had stretched out just a little too far in the circus-like balancing act that the gravity of his weight tips from Sven's balancing forehead.

Quick on the draw Anna needs all her upper body strength to hold onto the weighty child's body dangling over the other side of the stable partition to a 25 foot drop below.

{"Anna! I'm coming! Don't let go!"} The golden voice echoing through the barn rings through her mind simultaneously with the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard, belonging to the most beautiful golden man she ever met.

Zinging across the air, Svala returns with a strapping Kristoff Bjorgman, who quickly grabs hold of his straining wife and pulls her straight up and back, along with the young boy whose arm Anna doggedly refuse to let go of.

Kristoff envelops them both up in his massively strong muscles, clutched to his chest as Sven flies the group down to the safety of the hay covered ground.

"Anna! Don't do those crazy stunts while I'm away! What if I didn't get here in time?" Kristoff glances from Anna to Lukas as she quite motherly ruffles his shock of cocoa brown hair when they touch down.

"But you did!" The caramel cutie hops up to kiss her Kristoff's red cheek ' _good morning'_ with a dismissive response to his anxiety for her gung-ho safety. Anna was too wrapped up in her own adventure to remember to demand to know her husband and Rapunzel's whereabouts up to this point.

"You okay, Lukas?" Single minded Anna instead asks her little friend who was no worse for the wear. _Thank you, Lord._

Kristoff genuinely smiles at Anna's evident caring and relief for the child's safety. Though she was impetuous at times, Kristoff was pleased to see a glimpse of how good a mother his Anna would be as she unfailingly held onto that little boy's hand, even if it bruised her bright red wrist.

"Yeah. No problem. That was fun! Let's get some toast and jelly now!" The smiling back village boy relieves all of Anna's fears by enthusiastically dashing over to meet Olaf, who had been reinvigorated to be reunited with his absent foot. So now, the happy as a clam snowman could do a celebratory jig with his dance-loving new friend.

"What on earth were you reaching for anyway that almost got you killed?" Anna asks the boy who was dancing along with Olaf, his instant friend after a warm hug to the young hero who rescued his missing foot.

"Oh, just this old notebook. I thought it would be a map of buried treasure. But it's nothing special. Just some kid who went to this Fattigskole's sketchbook of copied Scripture art." Having too much fun with the tap dancing happy snowperson to care much about that old hand written tome, Lukas Rigborg casually hands the book over to Anna whose own feet were tapping to join in the giddy jig along with Olaf, Lukas, Sven and Svala.

"Sketchbook pad of Scripture? Hmm…That sounds interesting." Anna noncommittally begins to flip through the artistically stunning charcoal sketches of some youthful artist's well done notepad full of pencilled artistry of many Biblical scenes.

There was a thrilling depiction of David versus Goliath, an impressive Noah's Arc and the dove, the glorious Ascension of Christ, even a spiritual rendering of Michelangelo's Hand of God, among so many other Bible and Masters' brilliantly recaptured beauty. The pictures each had a matching Biblical verse describing the scene beneath on each well worked page.

But the one sketch most of all caught Anna's total stock still attention away from the toe tapping scene was the familiar sight indeed.

It was obviously the most treasured sketch here, from the way it was so painstakingly slaved over from the looks of several pages of practice on different sections, until the final page merged them all together into one perfected artwork.

It was a drawing of a sweet family; a father, mother, and two young daughters that had been copied out from a certain naval times newspaper publication of the Admiral and his young family overseeing the launch of the new naval craft of his Sjoforsvaret.

"Hey! No way! That's us!?" Freaking out to glimpse the well drawn sketch art of the undoubtable figures of Papa, young Elsa and toddler Anna herself sleeping in Mama's arms, from over a decade and a half ago.

 _But who on earth would want to trace some old newspaper of our first family photograph way back then?_

Anna studies the talented artist's labor that managed to capture each of her dear family member's expression to perfection. The child genius had especially paid attention to Elsa's delicate facial features that had been worked over and over from the previous practice pages until it was nearly undetectable which was the illustration and which was the real daguerreotype's flawless perfection.

And beneath the finished family drawing, the particular Bible passage beneath read:

 _'_ _Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.'_ Colossians 3:14

Impressed and a bit bewildered, Anna is literally floored when she turns from the last page of the sketchbook, dated Year of Our Lord 1834, and sees, addressed in the corner, of Paakstraede and Adegadde to this Fattigskole school in Odense, the drawing pad book's inked over thick lettering of a proud nine-year-old artist's fine nib pen that most clearly stated:

 **'This sketchbook belongs to Hans Westergaard.'**

"What?!" Anna cries out, sinking to her knees to the hay coated ground at the startling revelation. Her over-reaction causes Kristoff to drop the bucket of water he had been bringing for Svala and Sven in preparation to leave.

The sketchbook portrait of the Arendelle family that a young Prince, who had been sent away from his home and longed for one of his own to contain as much love as that fairytale family portrait drawing, had been hidden for a long time. For nearly seventeen years, the once treasured booklet had been covered in cobwebs in the stable little Hans spent most of his time with his runt horse Sitron here in this Lutheran charity school that had been founded as a convent for unmarried women of Danish nobility.

And now in Anna's stunned hands, the neatly transcribed sketchbook of the past just narrowly misses getting splashed and blurred by the muddled present.

It was all there. The real true love of a yearned for family life that young outcast Prince Hans' longed for in storybook tales to be his. A love that he would never find in the unhappy life he was born to in Egeskov, so he forced himself to grow up to be a perfect man that some other family, some other Princess would fall in love with.

And not just any old family and castle in the sky Princess Fair would do. Young Prince Hans Westergaard seemed to have his sights set on Elsa and her Arendelle Bernadotte family for nearly as long as she's been alive.

 _Whoa, that's deep. And a little creepy.  
_

Turning through the pages again rapidly, intrigued Anna sees beneath Elsa's single sketch the calligraphy embellished phrase, much too overly sentimental a title for a detached Westergaard child: _'Someday my beloved will give me a Home filled with Love's unity.'_

And beneath another sketch page on the opposite side, crammed with all the hundreds of intricate details within Elsa's beautiful eyes, were the overly romantic words: _'I will be her beloved and my beloved will be mine.'_

 _Always were full of yourself, Mister! But you can draw pretty good, I guess._ Anna's candid thoughts must admit to herself, whether or not she wished to hear it. She stares blankly at the back cover again and traces her finger over the name and address inscribed in deep ink there.

 _Hans Westergaard._ _Fattigskole school, Odense, Funen,_ _Denmark_ _._

 _So, this is where Hans went to school when he was young? This charity convent school? Why? Didn't his rich royal family in the Southern Isles want him?_ Anna's thoughts begin to spin around her affronted brain and go racing faster than Olaf's retrieved tapping foot doing pirouettes…

* * *

 _Yichud_ – a togetherness seclusion in Hebrew

 _Mazel Tou -_ Congratulatory 'Good luck!' in Hebrew

 _Hakuna matata –'_ No worries' in Swahili, made famous from Disney's The Lion King

 _min spadbarns_ \- my child Swedish

* * *

Greetings to my special Guest reviewer! Thank you so much for your kind words about our Helsa cover art illustrations!

That is so funny! I was already planning on replacing it with that new stunning one of our beautiful Frozen couple you suggested this publication weekend! ^_^ So as you requested, Guest-sama, here it is! I hope you enjoy it!

Didn't my big sister Setsuna do a dazzling job on depicting this gorgeous scene (yet to come in story *_^) of Hans and Elsa tearfully embracing one another? It is a truly emotionally charged part of our Hans x Elsa fairytale romance! I only hope I can describe the scene in words as perfectly moving as the portrait demands when I reach that juncture! :) It is coming soon, I promise! Our lovelorn Hans and Elsa are close to a relationship breakthrough!

God bless you all, my Frozen friends!

Please do review!

HarukaKou

P.S. Did anyone guess where little Lukas's Mama _Daphne_ who went to France to be a lady-in-waiting/ maid comes from?

You got it! "Cinderella II: Dreams Come True" She's the short and plump lady-in-waiting who's kind, fun-loving and friendly. Much like Anna! Guess that's why Lukas liked our Feisty princess! ^_^ The brown haired, pleasant smiling faced, sweet middle-aged woman who loves to dance and eat toast and jam would be much younger in 1851 with a small son and some undisclosed attachments to the Big Castle in Denmark's Southern Isle called Egeskov...Hmmm...


	5. Chapter 5 - Stolen Promises

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 5**

 **"Stolen Promises"**

"So! How about one last piece of wedding cake to fatten your skinny ass up, before we hit the road tonight, Lillebror?" Flynn Rider's garrulous, cocky voice rings across the open air wedding reception that had been set in the hidden recesses of the Dancing Forest of Prussia.

He turns around from the 'punch' bowl he had been hording to hold up a leftover plate of Attila's 'all-you-can-eat/ stuff-in-your-mouth' frosted German wedding cake goodness from the refreshment table.

"Hey, where are you anyway, Good-lookin'?" The stubble-chinned, handsome rogue peeks his head down in between an intriguing collage of gnarled tree trunks that had inexplicably grown themselves into a curling spiraled menagerie all throughout this section of the well-named 'Twisted Forest'.

Big Nose and his Hildegard's wedding had gone off without a hitch. _Actually the poor naïve bugger got himself hitched and roped into that whole marriage debacle—but them's semantics._

But after the remainder of the Snuggly Duckling gang had merrily seen the happy couple off in their rowing-boat-down-the-stream, it all went downhill from there.

At least in Flynn's sardonic eyes.

He felt he had manfully endured, for the sake of the bride and groom's blessed day, more than his share of ribbings and jibes from their vindictively violent villain-filled room of wedding guests.

In celebration for their Snuggly Duckling brother's conquest of his long-awaited dream, they all ate, drank, and were merry at his expense.

But the former thief turned dashing Prince, still suffering from a slight hangover from the previous night's festivities, had enough holy wine in him to not care one way or another. Even the long bearded, reverent Rabbi, once disrobed from his sanctified vestments, had somewhat joined in with the lively scene of dart throwing, tattoo branding, line dancing and constantly imbibing through it all, group of giddy ne'er-do-wells in – ahem – celebration of the holy event they had just partaken in.

He meandered tipsily around the melee of drunken bodies of exhausted partiers snoring loudly from where they were strewn all over the festive scene of undone messy ribbons, smashed apart flower petals and inebriated rats lying across the mostly vacated reception area.

Eugene sifts through the mess in search of his missing younger sibling who, soon after the nuptials and seeing off the blissfully married couple with noisy singing and raucous dancing, had quietly disappeared from the rest of the Pub Thugs' fun and games during the reception's aftermath.

 ** _BOINK!_**

"Oops. Sorry to wake you from your snooze, Hooky. But have you seen my illustrious little bro around? I seem to have misplaced him." Landing drunkenly on a discordant B flat on the piano's keyboard, Flynn had accidentally tripped over Shorty's prostrated knobbly legs sticking out from under Hookhand's traveling pianoforte where the old geezer had passed out way earlier in the boisterous drinking party.

"I saw him praying by the ice sculpture, back in the glen." Puffed up that his work was being so recognized by such a gent, Gunther, as an artist, was not-so-secretly honored that the Thief's more intelligent and classy brother had a discerning eye for art appreciation.

"There's your answer, Thief! Now, I've gotta get these soused louts whipped back to the Snuggly Duck before nightfall. You and Mr. Hans better start to pack it in, too. Before the big, bad goblins of the Twisted Forest, that come out at a sultry dusk such as this, come to claim your blackened soul, Rider. Ha, ha, har, har, har!" As the sneering piano player plies his wares in an eerie deathly dirge from Bach, the ex-seaman is joined in his cackles by a kicked-awake into gear Fang.

The sharp-toothed man had been sleeping against the string instrument's opened lid. Each of his entourage of rat friends, that had been taking a drunken snooze inside the shaded compartment thereof, are rudely awakened by the piano's abrupt vibrating strings they were previously bedded upon.

Ulf mimes the poor rodents' deafened shock as he silently follows Hookhand and Fang push the piano back towards the tavern to the east of the forest. The instrument was still playing spooky music all the while it dissolved into the falling darkness, just to irk Flynn.

Bruiser and Killer had already taken Tor back into their 'Leave You in Stitches' clinic for some late night gastric medicine required for his recently operated on ulcer. The big man had not heeded Bruiser's warnings not to over-indulge in alcoholic beverages, nor Killer's instruction not to engage in any raucous break-dancing. So now, as a result, Tor was suffering the consequences of another peptic ulcer.

That left a pan and dish clanging Attila and artful Gunther to clean up the rest of the party supplies and bring in the chairs.

Loathe to leave his new friendly flying horsies, Vladimir is soon employed to do a majority of the heavy lifting. The biggest thug of all drags the loaded down party goods back to the pub all at once with the, by now, grass stained wedding white chuppah veil they had used as the tent in the ceremony.

 ** _Hoot! Hoot!_**

"Eeek!" Alone in the glen, an owl's pair of creepy unblinking eyes, attached to its disturbingly twisted **180** ° angled head, pierces the quickly descending darkness. It spooks Eugene to let out a feminine pitched shriek and grab hold of the nearest human body in arm's reach.

"Don't wrinkle da suit, man. It was given me." Eugene's eyes widen to realize that he had reacted like a scared witless rabbit after being egged on by Hookhand's gravelly voiced, haunting taunts and spooky chamber music. So much so, the grown man had turned in fright to hug Job.

The dark-skinned Carribbean had kept himself to himself all this while, unnoticed in this festive party scene. Save for Gunther, who thought that the former pro-wrestler looked so stylish in the grey suit, the artist gave the threads to the shirtless Carribbean who was attending to the peacefully slumbering puffball of a sheep.

It had been the strong, silent type's duty to keep Rapunzel's little lamb safe from being turned into a late-night wedding BBQ treat of grilled lamb chops. The baa-ing fuzzball was particularly being eyed by that knife-wielding Fang and his gaggle of salivating rats, so it ran to Job for protection.

"Wrinkle? Who's wrinkling?" With a toothy grin up at the deadpan Islander, Flynn

chuckles nervously as he straightens Job's indeed mussed new, well-dressed suit front.

"He he he…" As he sniggers to himself, for some reason, the lifelong crook couldn't shake the feeling of his every nerve ending tingling with innate fear that something unsavory and foreboding was closing in.

"Let's go collect my brooding kid brother, Job old pal. He's probably sobbing into his beer over trying to abstain from that temptress Queenie of his. But you and the Kid both need a rest before we start out on the road. Especially if you're to be in tip-top shape to be presentable enough to meet my in-laws in the morning." Flynn stresses every syllable of the word _pre-sen-ta-ble._ He was already sketchy on how prim, demanding, dear Queen Arianna would react to his coming home with these two wounded, strangely depressing, somewhat un-socially adequate men.

And _without_ her pregnant daughter in his care, whom Eugene had been regretfully at odds with these past few months, that her affectionate Mom would no doubt be privy to the ins and outs of the sordid affair thereof.

"I'm hoping my normally lofty and verbose little brother— _whom everyone seems to fall in love with, for some odd reason_ —can charm that strict, critical-eyed good lady enough to let me off the hook for not being the most stellar example of a husband in not properly caring for her precious baby girl these past few tension-filled months." The proportionately penitent perpetrator begins to air out his guilt for getting involved with that cracked pirate in the first place. And more importantly, letting Rapunzel and her kind family down when the young woman expecting her first child needed him most.

 _Once a louse, always a louse…_

"Mother-in-laws are tricky creatures, let me advise you well, my fine Caribbean friend, should you ever embark on such a treacherous, yet in the end, extremely rewarding endeavor." Flynn Rider says with a swaggering hand on his hip as the pair walk along.

"And I would not blame Arianna one iota for blaming my poor judgment for her daughter's recent melancholy. Of course, being the father her grandchild should give me some gravitas, once I explain that Rapunzel chose to stay on with her lovely cousins up north now that they got their Mom and Dad back. Oh, and that thrilling little factoid should help smooth things over, too! I'll slide in how her sister, the diminutive, lithe, lovely Queen Idun, is alive and kicking again. That should make old Arianna happy enough not to slay me. Probably." Eugene weighs the consequences of returning back to Corona palace as he converses with a silent Job walking beside him in the darkened tree crowded glen.

"Right. But the returned parents might make explaining my acquaintance with that wicked pirate a little dicey. Hmm…Maybe we'll stay on here for a few days more while you two fellas recover…" Chickening out under the imagined explosive glare of Rapunzel's mother's flashing blue eyes, Flynn brightens a tad when he catches sight of Hans in the midst of the thicket.

Hans was kneeling before the melting form of that icy beauty that Gunther had sculpted for the wedding reception. The Danish Prince's hands were folded as if in deep thought. The in-scale ice angel's extended forehand pressed against his temple, as if in his dazed, remorseful mind Hans Westergaard was asking the melting, teary-eyed angel-like ice statue—that reminded him of someone dear—for some comparative forgiveness.

"Who's there?!" Hans ashamedly wipes away a stray unbidden tear for the happiness he yearned for, but would never allow his soiled heart to even try to capture. Even more so now that he personally had fallen in love with the too merciful and pure Queen Elsa.

Spinning on his heel with a start, Kommander Westergaard was obviously experiencing the same edginess as his big brother.

The dashing Prince of the Southern Isles leaps up from his kneeling position on the ground to his feet, his well-versed naval sword already drawn and readied.

But before Eugene had the chance to ease his uptight Lillebror's spontaneous agitation with a pair of upturned defusing hands, in the dusky darkness an earsplitting scream echoes through the Dancing Forest's twisted trees.

A woman's scream.

The boughs bent down to the ground, tangled in an utterly strange enmeshment, trip up the unidentified female hurtling through the forest glen coming directly towards them.

In a haze, all in white, the ghostly visage wandering through the, by now, almost totally dark forest rushes straight into in an unsuspecting Hans. The mysterious woman throws herself into his arms so abruptly he hadn't the opportunity to pull back, nor react defensively with his sword.

Good thing too. For when he squints in the dark down to the baffling figure that had just run to the sanctuary of his embrace, Hans lowers his sword behind him.

"Prince Hans! Help me! Oh, help me!" It was Hilde, Big Nose's new bride. The young woman, still enshrouded in her once pristine white wedding robe garb – that was now soaked wet, and sickeningly blood and dirt stained – was breathlessly bedraggled from all the thorns and thistles she had madly raced headlong through the grove's darkness in a heedless panic.

"Please calm yourself, dear lady. I will protect you, on my honor." With a steady voice that engendered unruffled tranquility, Hans immediately comforts the feverishly trembling all over woman with his tender, steadying embrace.

After protective Hans gives a swift search of the eerie ebony perimeter with wary, guarded eyes, Hilde collapses against his chest. Her hysterical tears, after a few moments of his empathic stroking, abate into soft sobs.

"Please don't cry. A bride is not supposed to cry on her wedding day." Hans cajoles the woman softly.

"But…Nozzy..Oh, my poor Nozzy…" Incomprehensible, Hilde trails off in indistinguishable tears.

"Take your time in explaining. But, pray tell, where is your husband?" Only a few hours since he himself attended the happy occasion, Hans' curious emerald eyes peer around to Hildegard's tear streaked face. His sympathetic disarming words whisper in sweet dulcet tones, as not to distress her further.

"Why am I not surprised to always find you with a woman dangling in your arms, Handsome?" His droll mouth downplayed the precipitous danger, though his amber eyes were filled with foreboding apprehension. Flynn Rider announces himself to the disturbed scene with an ironic twist to his lip at the pathetic, anxious soap opera being portrayed before him.

"What the hell happened to you? Where's Big Nose, Hilde?" Not half as smooth with gentle, soft words as his younger sibling, Eugene asks the pertinent question. His sepia brown hair, thick stubble, and swarthy complexion going all business, gives the former thief a dark look of consternation as he bears down to grip the shaky girl, shaking her shoulders.

"I don't know! They took him! These men I never saw before came out of nowhere and cornered us just as our rowboat was coming to the shore near the estuary upriver. And they took my Nozzy away…And it's our wedding day… _sniffle sniffle..."_ A violently shivering HIlde returns to her weeping against Hans' welcoming chest as the tough young Prussian girl becries her long-awaited for happy day's unhappy ending.

"Who were they?! Highwaymen?!" Eugene demands, his eyes going wide. As a former thieving criminal himself, he couldn't believe that the large nosed moderate ruffian had become the victim of some common robbery on his wedding night. Due to his good nature, Big Nose was actually the last pub thug that Eugene would suspect to have many old enemies who'd want revenge on the naïve, dreamy head-in-the-clouds petty pilferer. Big Nose certainly was not the type to create bad blood grudges with past acquaintances.

 _Speaking of blood relations… Maybe his jewel sense and gold money changing family…_

"They just snuck up on us out of nowhere! But they didn't want our money! So I doubt they were simple robbers! After they grabbed my hand and inspected my wedding ring for a few seconds, they didn't even want it! My poor Nozzy got a bloody nose for standing up for me. But all they seemed to be interested in was my ring, Prince Eugene!" While still leaning on Hans for support, a confused Hilde turns to Eugene.

"How many of them were there?" Eugene asks, his mind racing through the mental mugshots of who could possibly be responsible in his thieving head.

"There were at least three or four of these big brutes, all wearing hooded cloaks. And tall black boots, sort of like his." Hilde motions her head down towards Hans' tall slick footwear. Then she screws up her face up in her best attempt to recall any further details of the frightening events of some hours ago that her blurry-with-tears mind would rather forget. But if it meant her Big Nose's safety, she must steel her sensibilities to face it, and remember as much as she could to help find clues to lead to him.

"They certainly were foreigners from the unfamiliar language they were speaking. Definitely not speaking Prussian. Save for the one who seemed to be the leader, who did most of the talking to Big Nose while the others held me back. They gagged and tied me to the rowboat again so I wouldn't put up a fight. My poor Nozzy was beside himself, struggling against the bigger villains. But they threatened me with daggers if he didn't cooperate." The plaintive eyed girl, after taking a deep breath, rationally relates her frightening tale to the interested pair of brothers.

Out of the corner of his competent eyes, Hans watches the dark man named Job silently leave the tree covered thicket without saying a word.

"If they didn't want to steal your money or your fancy gold ring… What did they want? Can you remember anything else, Hilde?" Eugene asks again, looking for valid motive. He only had a sneaking suspicion that Big Nose's past family dabblings in jeweled larceny may have had a hand in this inexplicable vengeful act.

"I think they wore black capes with hoods that had matching golden symbols on them."

"What was the symbol like, Madam? Can you elucidate further?" Hans asks, trying to piece the clues together of who the aggressors may be.

"I don't know… Oh yes! It was an anchor…with a snake wrapped around it…I think... And a fancy gold crown on top of the anchor…When he grabbed my arm to inspect my ring, the man in charge had a deep scar across his wrist that led to a bulge at the back pinky side of his hand. Here, like it once had some kind of deformity beneath his single glove." The round face cute girl pounds a fist to her head and closes her eyes as she remembers more vividly the answer to Hans' question. Hilde points a traced line with her finger along the outside edge of her left hand, her sweet face contorted in confusion at her own strange detail recollection.

Hans' eyes look askance momentarily. Then his solemn brow darkens gravely.

"They took my Nozzy away. And then the ruffians left me in the boat, and pushed it downstream. I think I was floating adrift in the stream for a long time. I couldn't tell how long! It just seemed like forever until the boat washed back here and I managed to free myself from the bonds they tied around my wrists. All I could think was where to go for help, because I had no idea where those rotten ruffians took my Nozzy from there, even if I could row the boat back! What if we can't find him? What if it's too late? What if they kill him?! I'm so scared." Hildegard was trembling dreadfully at the idea of losing the love of her life, just as their lives together were starting.

After a pause, Hans Westergaard speaks, with the cool, calm and collected deportment of commanding leadership.

"My lady, I advise you to return to the Inn and apprise the others there to notify the authorities back in Corona of this offensive transgression." Hans, his well articulated eloquence as persuasive as it was emphatically assertive, cannot restrain himself from taking command in rendering aid to a disadvantaged female in need.

"My brother and I will immediately give chase to these malfeasants who have inequitably disrupted your union and abducted your new spouse. Please, make haste to the Snuggly Duckling. Hookhand will understand what do to when you tell him he must inform Corona's Royal Guard, so they can begin their inquiries here on this front—if my suspicions are actually incorrect." He reassures the nerve-wracked girl and she nods, trusting him implicitly to the task he's placed on her thin, yet sturdy, shoulders.

"What? Are you crazy? Go at it alone?! We haven't the faintest clue as to where we're heading in this gung-ho fashion you're apparently enamored of, Sideburns! Remember! You're a freshly injured man yourself, Kid! I won't let you go traipsing off into the dark dangerous unknown again with your gut in that condition. Not when we have a perfectly suitable law enforcement unit back in Corona. The Captain of the Guard, Schmidt – _I can assure you, personally_ – is a darn dogged lawman. He's almost sadistic – believe you me – in his obsession to apprehend the criminal element. And his dang horse is no better, _or worse, if you're on the criminal end of the chase_." Eugene recalls, not so fondly, his own memories of tromping through the woods, dangling off trees and swinging off vines, sword fighting with frying pans, etc., all at the receiving end of a certain aggressively relentless equine force of nature named Maximus.

"We really should go to the authorities this time and leave serving justice and the non-citizenry responsibility of racing around rescuing reformed crooks to them…" An exasperated Flynn Rider goes off on a quickly spit out tirade of all the reasons he and his valiant, nutsy little brother, _under his care_ , should not go out on another dangerous limb of daring adventure on their own –

With a resigned sigh, Flynn watches Hilde dash off towards the Snuggly Duckling as Job and the trio of the Snow Queen's flying white horses named Flurru, Snædís, and _Nýsnær_ , all come bounding into the dusky thicket, right on cue with authoritative Hans' driven indication.

"We must act. I believe I may just know who the malefactor may be, Storbror. Unfortunately…" The Southern Isles Prince, with a pondering expression on his thought provoked features, easily alights onto his choice of one of the white mares' back.

Snædís, which meant ' _Snow goddess'_ in the Snow Queen's Icelandic tongue, lifts her elegant head high and whinnies in satisfaction to be useful to her equestrian qualified master once again.

"Oh! Why not! Let's us good-looking, three musketeers go charging off to danger for every damsel in distress we meet in the road, and save the day as heroes once again! What the hell!" Eugene, after giving the last remaining horse's own wet nudging nose a shove, followed by a pursed lip and deep sigh, decides to let his courageous, oft denied, soft side kick in. His long legged form finally slings over his flying horse's back until he was astride his mare Flurru beside a sideways glancing, smirking Job who was riding the third horse parallel to him named _Nýsnær_. The two men on their steeds flank their bold leader, the audacious youngest member of the daring trio.

" _Les Trois Mousquetaires, eh?_ (The Three Musketeers)? Then 'All for one and one for all'! 'After all, we are men, and it is our business to risk our lives. Come, Aramis, Porthos!" Fully equal to this flamboyant role he suddenly throws himself into, superb actor Hans recites some famous lines from Alexandre Dumas' famed novel of French royal guard adventurers who lived and died by the sword and musket.

"If you say so, Kid." Shrugging to one another of this crazy Dane's French flight of fancy, Flynn and Job exchange a bewildered look from where they sat astride each of their horses, unaware of the newly scripted historical novel's comparative.

But a cocksure, smirking back Hans, who always relished in his theatre performing arts in days of youth, takes on the lead role as clever D'Artagnan. This dashing red-headed hero breaks the Snow Queen's three flying horses, Snædís **,** Flurru, and _Nýsnær,_ into a run across the thicket, out of the glen and into a clearing where the flying mares and their brave riders take flight to the sky, where a new adventure into the vast unknown beyond the blackened, moonless sky northward awaited…

 _'I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death…'_ The quote echoes in Hans' daring, yet despondent mind as swift as the wind whistling amidst fragments of memories' past splendors…

* * *

 _Fattigskole,_ _Odense_ _,_ _Denmark_ _._

"You guys seem to be having fun." Her own feet tapping as she enters the convent's stable barnyard, Rapunzel's sweet timbre voice says as she approaches closer to where Olaf, Sven and Svala were dancing along and singing a merry tune with the little boy named Lukas they had made friends with.

Tthough her own insides were a bit too uneasy queasy to partake in the happy jig, the loving Corona Princess still yearned to be dancing along, too. But she knew, with a new baby on the way, she had to start to set her priorities straight and be the responsible adult in the room for her unborn child's sake.

 _Oh, well._ _Eugene_ _'s not here to laugh at me for 'spinning like a silly top' dancing anyway. Though it's not half the fun, is it, Anxelin?_

Rapunzel sighs inwardly to the tiny babe that she was grateful to count as her constant companionable company now that her Eugene was away. Though the small child, yet growing incrementally inside her day by day in her womb, was not fully formed at the moment, Rapunzel recognized that this child had been blessed by God to be their little miracle of life.

And even if this pregnancy made the young woman often sick, moody, ill feeling and weak, Princess Rapunzel of Corona wouldn't exchange her promise of love, in the form of Eugene's baby, for a thousand and one days of good health.

She was going to share this child's creation into this world with the man she loved more than life itself – her wonderful, funny, dreamy husband Eugene – who loved her back, she was so sure of it, every bit as much. She was never surer of Eugene Fitzherbert as she was again now. Even after all the distrust and uncertain separation, and then with everything they had been through together in the face of danger, Rapunzel was at last certain of their undying love, although they were physically parted again.

 _I'm so proud of you for taking care of your little brother, Eugene. I love you all the more for it. I'm sure we'll all meet again in happier days ahead, soon. Then there'll be no more crying, or hurt, or sadness, Anxelin._

Rapunzel smiles and closes her eyes to send her handsome hero all her faithful fond affection and true love.

"Feeling better?" Kristoff asks a nodding Rapunzel, as he finishes loading the supplies that he had bartered with the kindly, yet savvy, Lutheran nuns in the Fattigskole school earlier, in trade for him doing some work chopping down a dilapidated old tree that was teetering dangerously near the mission charity school wing of the courtyard complex.

Kristoff had taken an airsick Rapunzel for quiet rash and stomach medicinal relief into the convent upon first touchdown arrival. The responsible Ice Harvester had decided to land his pair of reindeer who were growing fatigued after the long continuous in flight journey.

After striking a deal with Mother Superior Sister Clarice, the industrious young man set his muscles to work in trade for fresh supplies and boarding for the night for his entourage.

Of course, the sweet blonde boy hadn't the heart to awaken his peacefully napping Anna from her slumber in the barn where she lay so comfortably with Sven and Svala on a stack of fresh hay beds. Olaf vowed to keep a close eye out, the literal snowman plucking his charcoal orbs out to display his keenness to stand as faithful watch guard in the stable barn over his sleeping companions.

Of course, Kristoff never imagined that his Feistypants of a girl would get herself into such adventurous trouble to need rescuing in the seclusion of a quiet barn as she did.

All to retrieve Olaf's tossed aside snowshoe and find something else precious along the way, too.

"Wow, who drew that? It's beautiful." Rapunzel walks over to where her cousin Anna had been pouring over a leatherbound notepad to look over the ginger girl's shoulder at the artwork.

A lifelong artist herself, Rapunzel was bowled over impressed at the attention to detail in the subjects' eyes and facial features, not to mention the perfectly proportional, in scale body physicality – hands, arms, necks – that even a seasoned illustrator such as herself still found most challenging.

"Guess." Is all a droll voiced Anna answers. Her silently rolling eyes, pointing up to the heavens confused her Prussian cousin greatly. But Anna just couldn't help but feel that the gifted redhead lad had _far_ too many talents.

When a dumbfounded Rapunzel shakes her head, giving up the quiz, Anna slaps closed the sketchbook and points a finger to the name that had been carefully printed on the back cover, out by hand in bold, yet still childlike, handwriting: **HANS WESTERGAARD.**

"Hans?! No way! And I thought I was going to surprise you when I found out from the convent nuns up in the charity school wing that –" A deflated Rapunzel was just about to burst with excitement at her intriguing discovery when Anna cuts her off at the pass.

"—Hans went to school here when he was little. I know." Anna smugly shrugs her shoulders, as if she could care less as to _that_ Hans' early life—although the younger Arendelle Princess really was interested, more than she cared to admit.

"Yes! He did attend the charity school here. And Sister Clarice – who's a very nice Mother Superior, the dear elderly lady – even showed me a special plaque from Hans' graduation as his class valedictorian from his primary education here. They said Hans had the highest scores in aptitude, reading, mathematics, even Bible study memorization, than any other student before or since." The brown-haired young woman says with a tinge of pride for the Prince she'd come to know so well, who just happened to be Eugene's younger brother.

As for Anna, she merely rolls her eyes again.

"Practically all of the older nuns remember him from when he was attending school here, after Hans was sent here by his family when he was only four and a half years old. They essentially raised and educated him here after his father and brothers practically abandoned him and his poor little colt here. No one in the family ever even visited him all the years he was here. But the nuns all had glowing reports of such an intelligent, prized student and well mannered young man who always impressed them with his genius and skills."

"Would you like to meet them, too, Anna? The sisters of the convent are really the sweetest old things, who love to drink chamomile tea with honey and quietly chat by the fireplace about their dear students. See this pretty little teacup? They gave it to Pascal because they liked showing him off to the school children in class." The brown bobbed hair female points to her chameleon friend and his new prize of a tiny handmade porcelain china cup with the painting of Holy Mother Mary on it.

Accustomed to living in a secluded cloister of sorts herself, Rapunzel, had she not fallen madly in love with a poor sinner boy named Eugene, might have considered becoming a holy sister of the cloth, too. After seeing and being impressed how contented and peaceful these royal women who had remained unmarried old maids or unwanted outcasts for one disowned or disgraced reason or another, had found solace in the blessed sisterhood in sanctified union with none save Almighty God the Father above.

"And hear more women who fell under _Master_ Westergaard's undeniable charm swoon and fawn over that, that… That Red?! _Don't I get enough of that around here? Between you and Els—Never mind_ …" Anna murmurs under her breath.

"No, thank you, cousin. I'll pass." Anna, while in a sisterly mission of mercy, still had a tough time trying to separate Prince Perfect Hans from the sophisticated scoundrel of a villain who cruelly poured cold water over the fires, dousing her love for him.

Literally.

But that frigid memory is warmed in Rapunzel's bedazzled eyes and gushing words when she pauses at a particular sketch of Old Testament Bible hero Joseph being thrown into a deep pit by his ten brothers. Each of the brethren had such details on their angry faces and bitter expressions of pure jealous emotion that Rapunzel was both wowed and moved by the depiction.

"I still can't believe how exquisitely he drew Elsa's eyes. As if he captured her soul reflected in each sketch. And how old was he when he drew these? Age eight or nine? Now, that is raw talent." With the impressed compliment, Rapunzel smiles at boy Hans' artistry, despite Anna's confrontational attempts to deride the Danish Prince. "With all those amazing drawings, though… Poor boy must've been very lonely. Believe me, I know how important your creations become when they're the only companions you have growing up." Pascal pats his emotional girl where the compassionate reptile was perched on Rapunzel's slumped shoulder.

"Oh yes. _Poor boy_. But he did get Elsa's eyes right, I'll give him credit there. It's almost as if…" Upon flipping through the sketchbook again at a rapid rate, Anna was astonished at how Hans had cleverly duplicated yet subtly altered Elsa's eyes focus to change from page to page. So it appeared as if the young girl were looking up from the scene to see her illustrator.

Namely young Prince Hans.

 _I'm beginning to get the feeling that you really were smitten with my Elsie since you were a little guy, weren't you, Westergaard? And it wasn't just for her kingdom, was it, Red? You needed love… Was your home life so bad, that you'd do anything – and I mean anything – to get away from it? Guess we're going to find out…_

Anna considers this ponderous thought, purposely trying to steer her mind clear of a more morose outcome as she keeps up the façade of her anger towards Hans to give cover.

Kristoff intuitively hears her voice in his heart as he goes to load her, Rapunzel, Pascal and Olaf on Sven and Svala's backs after the group had all waved and hugged farewell to Lukas and the nuns in the distance with the promise to visit again soon.

 _But if Hans was hurt so terribly, not knowing if he'd live or die, where else would he go? Where else would any one of us go?_

 _{"_ Something tells me that he'll go there, Kristly _."}_

Anna's blue-green eyes meet Kristoff's cocoa brown as he looks back at her over his shoulder where she was clinging instinctively to his muscular back. The double reindeer traverse the sunset towards a tall spired Renaissance water castle standing in all its imposing, surreal fortress glory where it was looming in the not-so-distant, dusky vista.

Having not much to go on beyond Anna's own gut instinct, Kristoff directs his reindeers in that direction. The Wind Whisperer's connection to the animals of the land and beasts of the air and sea was only a confusion of dubious sightings that could not clearly see through the original Wind Whisperer Ragi's aura of wind sheltered speed that carried Hans on swift wings to the continent.

On the invisible wings of the wind that the Snow Prince commanded, a fully rested Sven and Svala cross the dark sky to find out if Anna was right.

* * *

 _The_ _North_ _Mountain_ _,_ _Norway_

As one snowgie attempts to stand perfectly erect and still, a second slippery customer appeared to be doing its best to not tumble off the first one's rounded shoulders.

But when another crowned set of double stacked snowgies move precariously toward the former pair, they all begin to lose their balance, the entire tipsy crew about to teeter over and fall –

"Oh, no, you don't!"

 ** _WHOOSH!_**

A sudden gust of cold air magically whips around the front Palace entrance way to encase the quartet of stacked animated pawns into two stiffened frozen pillars of ice. All four of the snowgies' teeth start to chatter in frost frozen place.

King Agdar smiles to himself rather smugly at the ease it took for him to aim and focus his powers, yet not disturb a single one of the other pieces on the massive chessboard.

"Mmmrr, mmrr, hmrrn, hmrrn!" Of course, his none-too-pleased opponent in the friendly game of draughts (checkers), was a Marshmallow snow monster more than ten times the aristocrat's height.

But that didn't intimidate Agdar Bernadotte in the least. After all, the Ice King had created the verglas raised chessboard floor in the Front Hall vestibule of Elsa's incredible Ice Palace. _And_ he also created the girl who made this entire winter wonderland edifice, _including_ Marshmallow and every mystical creature within it. Agdar puffs up with fatherly pride at the thought.

The scattered, playful snowgies, once the authoritative King had laid his strict rules down, were only too excited to join in the new game that Idun and Elsa had suggested to entertain the recuperating man. The brain stimulating and cryokinetic power training activity would be good for Papa's mind, rather than just whiling away the time brooding.

It had been a little tough to teach Marshmallow and his enormous, not so tactile, snow fingers to grasp the theory of checkers' diagonal space-hopping across the sixty-four, alternately pure snow white and grayish with hoarfrost generated squares adjacent to each other on the checkered floor.

But the clever King of Arendelle had eventually succeeded in driving home the base rules of the game to the not so simple snow monster.

Once Marshmallow – who, by the way, haughty King Agdar had _officially_ renamed 'Snow Beast', for his own sanity's sake – ceased just grabbing up the squealing, wriggling snowgies from the chessboard in the only way he understood to control his tiny pets that Kristoff and Olaf and brought up to him one day, at Agdar's objective phrase of 'capture the pawns'.

"Now, take note, Snow Beast." Mentally using his cryokinetic energies to coax his double snowgie crowned pawn to hop over two successful single ordinary pieces that belonged to his opponent, Agdar arrogantly smirks at the board that the experienced draughts/ checker player practically owned.

"Hrrggh?" Poor, outwitted Marshmallow moans as two more of his snowgie checkers, were cold frost telekinetically lifted from the checkered squares to be placed in Agdar's already crowned pile. The Ice King had constructed an ice box to hold the captured pawns, bouncing up and down energetically wanting to play again on his side of the stairwell in the elaborate Ice Palace.

"Your turn, my friend." While King Agdar was a gentleman of heart, he also owned a combative, competitive male spirit, that his wife and daughter were glad to see rearing its magnificent head, more than the depressed cool nonchalance he had been displaying but yesterday.

Aware of their concern for his well-being and striving to be more himself again for all their sakes, Agdar did find this competition that his Idun suggested and Elsa set up, invigorating.

 _My girls know me more than I know myself sometimes… They understand just what I need… I am a blessed man, dear Lord. Thank you._

King Agdar's smirk turns into a smile of grateful pride as he gazes upward towards the upstairs bedroom of this extraordinary Ice Palace that his Elsa envisioned it to cold reality.

 _I do wonder what my lovely ladies are up to up there, all this time…_

* * *

Up in Elsa's second story grand bedchamber, the current Queen of this kingdom and her Queen mother had been doing some long-awaited for bonding…

Queen Idun had put her lithe, picturesque daughter in a fashion show for her own enjoyment. Her motherly insight realized how prim and proper, tall and elegant, a bit of a show off Elsa enjoyed the art of glamour in the oh-so-feminine love of dress up fashion as she did when she was a little girl.

Now the twenty-three-year-old young woman had the shapely figure of a model, not to mention the ability to create her own artistically aesthetic habiliments and raiment from just the visionary gift of her imagination to strut on display.

She then had a feeling that her once constricted child could use an unconventionally liberating fashion show to ease the tension that was evident, for the loving mother at least, on her talented child's refined, yet secretly forlorn brow.

"Come now, Elsa, don't be shy." After glimpsing more than a few either tastefully imposing, or decoratively pictorial, ice formed garments that modish Elsa had personally fashioned and luxuriously tailored around her graceful body, Idun was excited to see something more deservedly striking.

But when the platinum blonde comes out with yet another beautiful creation after beautiful creation of cultured and stately, majestically exquisite ice clothing with long royal capes and tall collars, Queen Idun's patience was waning.

She had been seated for almost an hour as audience on Elsa's soft snow bed that Kristoff had laid a special insulated linseed impregnated waxed cotton, used in ice harvesting, over the bed for Anna to share with her big sister on sleepover nights, so as not to let her cute bum get too chilly.

"I am waiting for something bold and exciting, min skonhet ( _my beauty)."_ The Queen, while indulging herself on a box of her favorite expensive Belgian chocolates she hadn't had in years that Kai had purchased at the King's bequest for his sweet-toothed love, had watched Elsa's dainty feet peek out for a split second before pulling back in behind the changing screen.

Silent, almost frantic rustling comes the reply.

"Is there a problem, Elsa? Do you need some help buttoning up or tying something?" Idun glances around, then surreptitiously wipes her sticky chocolate smudged fingertips on the wet rim of the ice bed's tinkling icicle canopy to dilute the dark chocolate mess she finishes wiping to her indigo, fancy trimmed dress skirt.

With a guilty giggle, Elsa's sweet Mama, who still owned that youthful, naughty streak, was always hands-on ready to attend to her children. Idun loved both her girls and tried best to be a good mother and play along with all of their interests and dress-up play times.

"I – I'm not sure if this one was finished yet… That's all." Elsa's timorously nervous voice proved to Idun that her self-conscious, introverted daughter, though she had come a long way since the old days when the reticent teenager would barely make eye contact with her parents, never mind others, would give such an ostentatious exhibit of her ingenious and innovative ice apparel.

"Well, let me see, and I'll tell you if it needs more work. That is what mothers are for, right? Giving an honest opinion, whether you want it or not?" Idun's wittiness constantly tried to bring Elsa out of her shell. But the withdrawn nature of ice's cold demands left her child with uncertain inhibitions, as hard as her mother tried to free her of it.

But that didn't mean Idun ever gave up. On the contrary, the former Queen and the new one both shared a passion for elegant clothing and fine trendsetting designs.

Little hoyden Anna may not have cared if she showed up at the dinner table in her beat up and ripped, hole-y clothes that often embarrassed her father in front of important guests and drove her demurely matured, modish mother mad as the messy ginger hair baby turned into a messy ginger haired teenager. But her quiet and tidy platinum blonde little girl always had a flair for refined style and keeping her primly proper self neat and clean at all times.

 _Oh, how I have missed my little girls…_

Tears were biting behind Idun's passionate maternal eyes when she thinks about these five past, lost years when her children, just blossoming into young ladies, were at a critical juncture without the guidance and help from their parents.

Elsa's self-imposed isolation and aloofness were already a major problem that Idun had every intention of addressing when her stubborn husband was finally ready himself. After months and months of working on him, Idun's King was just about prepared to open up and share all of his past issues and struggles with the ice with their similarly gifted daughter.

And then the four of them could be a normal family again.

But a shipwreck and a pirate changed all that.

Now, thanks to the courage and bravery of so many new friends, their family had a second chance again, if they all learned to just open up…

 _Anyway! Enough of dredging up the past! I'm getting as bad as my husband! It's the future we should look up to now!_

"Elsa, are you eventually coming out with that one, dear? Or do I have to go back there…?" The positive influence mother stands up from the surprisingly comfortable 'snow-bed' and its linseed waxed cotton mat that gave Elsa's snowy mattress a rolling, sloshy feel that the Queen found rather…luxurious…

 _Perhaps, we could have the same bedding in our_ _Ice_ _Palace_ _guest room, Agdar…_

Plopping down again on the soft snow mattress, Idun smiles coyly. At the ripe old age of thirty-nine, the just turning middle-aged woman could still look forward to later nighttime bedroom fun on a snowy-bed such as this. Elsa and Anna's chuckling mother, who still had a for zest for life, pops one more sweet centered dark chocolate bonbon in her mouth to tickle on her warm tongue.

As Idun opens her eyes after indulging in such sumptuous bliss, just then, Elsa hesitantly steps out from behind the screen wearing a stylish, yet dramatic; exquisite, yet provocative; grandiose, yet engaging, brilliant snowy satin white and silvery and crystal encrusted tight body-hugging gown that flared into an icy layer of breathy puff chiffon at her shapely ankles.

The delicate point-lace design of the off-the-shoulder gown's thinly gold and silver thread spun, nearly see-through center front panel consisted of a rather daring – especially for this stuffy Victorian age – gauzy ice diamond studded triangular dip that displayed the finer points of this Ice Queen's curves in an arresting, titillating, yet stately manner.

The entire icy white fashion aesthetically pleased the eye in a sublimely artistic way that Idun found quite incomparable.

The tall young woman takes a few steps in her tall four inch high ice heels, nervously chuckling before her mother with a sheepish, bashful look on her prettily pink cheeks.

"Oh, Elsa. Min Skonhet." The Swedish word for 'beauty' spilling from her awed lips, Idun has a hard time catching her breath for all the dazzling white loveliness displayed before her.

The staggered Queen backs up to trip down onto the snowy white bed in an ungraceful plop. Her thin hand reaches for her throat to steady her astonished chest. She looks upon her gracefully poised elder daughter's unconventional, tailored sculpt, adorned with just the right amount of iridescent glitter and bejeweled crystal wonder from Elsa's diamond ice, from well turned petite toe to her shining, majestic platinum tresses in a queenly chignon.

"That is the most thrilling and breathtaking wedding dress I have ever laid my eyes upon." The thoroughly impressed older Queen finally is able to find her voice after several moments of simply staring at her gorgeous, attractive daughter in profound admiration.

"Wedding dress? Oh no, Mama. This wasn't meant to be a –" Embarrassed beyond words by her mother's genuine insinuation, Elsa blushingly glances her averted eyes down at the delicate embroidered lace arms and low-cut off the shoulder, lacy breast top section of the form fitting, flared bottomed frosty gown that she had just recently completed the icy design.

The young woman had been herself wearing something akin to this so many times in her nightly dreams these past two years. When the fantasies always ended with her love's tenor voice calling out for her to be _his beloved one_ …

"I'm so pleased to see, that even if you weren't consciously admitting it aloud, your heart is ready to entertain the thought of sharing the warmth of your love with a forever mate in the Lord's most sanctified sacrament between a man and woman." Practically clapping her hands together in glee at the fortuitous revelation that she always wished for her difficult oldest child, the doting mother speaks her most prayed for hope for both her children to find the true happiness, as she did, in a loving husband's embrace.

Queen Idun trips across the icy bedroom to give Elsa a warm hug.

"Mama, really! It's only an ordinary white dress! I am the Ice Queen, after all!" Stumbling over her words as she shakes her head in denial, Elsa felt the need to justify her fancy lacy garb. But her chuckling Mama would have none of it.

"Though I'm sure we will turn more than a few stuffy heads with your chic design, my darling – _your conservative Papa included_. But I am certain, from the way he looked at you, that your Prince Hans will doubtlessly be impressed to show off his one in a-million glamorous diamond of a Queen wearing this daring wedding gown." Petting the soft, silky frosted folds of Elsa's translucent skirt base plumage that she was kneeling on the icy marble floor to fluff out, Idun winks, continuing to tease her baby's dreamt of future marital bliss to be secured for her once unimaginably withdrawn and introverted daughter.

"He's not **_my_** Prince, Mama. I don't even know if he cares for me at all!" Elsa's high-pitched coloratura soprano chirp cries out so loudly and so abruptly sudden in her own despondent frustration that Idun worried that her fragile minded Papa would hear the discordance and come running up the glassy stairs to see what the problem was.

And thusly cause so many more issues that the Queen didn't relish dealing with right now.

Fortunately, just at that moment, Marshmallow must've just scored his first checker point. The Snow Beast's merry laughter rings throughout the Ice Palace somewhere down below where he and the King were competitively playing at the challenging game of draughts.

"He didn't even say goodbye…After all, no one would want me…I'm a freak…Why would I ever expect anything more?" Now the tears in Elsa"s eyes rolled down her cheeks until they smudged the lavender eyeshadow. Her broken voice and opened dam of tears bespoke of the girl's sincere heartbreak loss and utterly honest yet unexpected love for that absent young man.

Idun jumps to her feet to hug her exquisitely dressed-to-kill, yet lovelorn child to her own motherly chest that keenly felt her offspring's heartache and pain of the uncertain unknown of this inscrutable separation.

The girl who once vowed to never be seen crying openly, weeps into her Mama's deep brown hair and warm comforting arms.

 _I believe I saw it there, in both your young, devotedly-in-love eyes._

"My darling, beautiful one. You are our lovely little girl, _not_ a freak. Don't ever say that! But if you wish for 'more,' then…you must find him, and discover if his love is real and true as I believed it to be. Find out _why_ he left so suddenly. I'm sure there must be a good reason." Idun gazes seriously at her confused child with a steady assurance that Elsa's blue eyes desperately needed.

"I know it's frightening, but if you ever want to have peace in your heart, Elsa, you must be willing to take this chance for love. Life is full of pain and also full of joy. Both aspects come to every life and we must meet them head on, keeping the peace of God in our souls, and the love of our family, in our hearts. Love is a risk worth taking. To love so deeply, so fully, and be loved as that in return—there is nothing like it between two human hearts! If you attain it, it will give your life such joy and completeness. But you must put everything on the line to uncover the promise of such richness of a treasure immeasurable, beyond all other wealth. Remember, Love is the greatest gift our Creator ever designed for our lives." The Arendelle Queen speaks with a wisdom beyond her own years, for she has had much time in solitude to ponder on such intensely deep subjects and all those hours alone in that dark, dank cavern, with only the Lord to speak to in her time of trial.

"Such a love comes only but once in a lifetime, my dearest, for each of us. Don't let your chance at something so precious go. Don't let the tender, fleeting promise slip away from your heart and be stolen by fear, lost forever. If only you could grasp hold on tight to it in both your hands. With all your heart, your shimmering icy butterfly may finally unfurl and take wing." Squeezing Elsa's cool hands and kissing their palms with a mother's love, the loving Queen's lilting soprano whispers softly to play her tremulous child's tearfully reverberating heart strings, searching deep into the ice crystals of Elsa's eyes for the love that was still evident there for her lost prince.

So Queen Idun begins to devise in her quick mind an audacious plan to bring that Danish Prince Charming back into her previously untouchable daughter's life…

 _And please love my girl tenderly, dear Hans..._ Idun sends a thought to the motherless boy, wherever the sky had taken him, as only a mother could pray…

* * *

 _min skonhet_ \- my beauty in Swedish

 _Flurru_ – Icelandic for flurry

 _Snædís_ – Icelandic for snow goddess

 _Nýsnær_ – Icelandic for new snow

 _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ \- The Three Musketeers in French: a historical novel by Alexandre Dumas written in 1841.

* * *

Hello, Frozen friends! How's that for a salute to Mama's everywhere? Happy early Mothers' Day to every Mother and her child out there!

Isn't Queen Idun a wonderful example of motherhood? She wants to share now in every part of Elsa and Anna's lives, to make up for the lost years. Idun truly loves her children with all her heart, prays constantly for their happiness, and will do anything to make their futures be filled with security and joy. Sound familiar, like yours? ^_^

Even Rapunzel and her unborn miracle 'Anxelin' were having some mother/daughter moments! Just a reminder of how long before we came into this world, our Mothers were already caring for us!

Most of us lucky ones have been blessed to have a Mama like that to uncomplainingly care for us, sweetly play with us in childish silly games, and generally bring her songful smile to uplift our spirits all throughout the days of our childhoods,

So, as this week leading up to her one day of the year for her maternal recognition for all she's sacrificed and given to her children unselfishly progresses, be sure to let your dear Mother know how much you appreciated her Godly attentions. For surely, she had been preordained by our Creator above to give us both the blessings of a boundless life's possibilities, and her forever, unconditional love.

Now, what about this new mysterious adventure our Three Musketeers (you asked for it, Eugene! ^_^) are embarking upon? I wonder where these endless plot twists will take us to now…

Please review your take on the dicey matter!

And please have the happiest of Mother's days spent with your cherished Mama! It's this upcoming weekend already, so don't miss making her some little handwritten note/card or little homemade gift created with love, or even a long phone call to brighten her day. Our generous Mothers need no more than to hear how much she's loved and appreciated in her child's sincere voice to feel God's love for her heartaches, compassion and sacrifice along our journey to adulthood.

God bless all our old Mamas and young Mothers-to-be out there, too!

Happy Mothers' Day!

HarukaKou


	6. Chapter 6 - Checkmate

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 6**

 **"Checkmate"**

"Whoa." The young woman's jaw drops in awestruck amazement.

Her ginger braids flapping wildly on the wind have to smack Anna of Arendelle back to reality, as she and her significant other race the sky on reindeer-back some twenty kilometers east from the Fattigskole charity mission school.

But Egeskov Castle's monk's brick and carved stone, moat surrounded fortress exterior was redoubtably disquieting to say the least. From its double drawbridges that connected the main palace's foreboding frontage to its peaked triple conical towers, to the 200+ rounded arch windows with black arcading around its numerous gables, the sprawling complex of long buildings of the double walled sixteenth century Renaissance Water Castle was ominous.

Nevermind its ornate maze gardens, impressive topiary and perfectly groomed bushes of the lush greenery and rows of fuchsia and purple flora. All surrounded the reflective moat that gave the pristinely picturesque, imposing castle set amidst the body of dark water a distinct air of cold un-approachability, even on this warm summer day.

But approach it they must, if ever this group of answer-seeking travelers was to uncover the truth.

"So this is where Hans grew up? I heard the Southern Isles Castle was impressive. But I never imagined it would be so… so…so…" Rapunzel, as her ride, Svala, flies up alongside Sven, struggles for words while she comments on the stretching majestic splendor of the palatial landscape that she, Kristoff, Anna, Olaf, and Pascal had an aerial bird's eye view of its grandiose surroundings.

"– Forbidding?" Honest, straightforward and down-to-earth Kristoff provides the one sentiment his intuitive soul was picking up, or rather not picking up. The lack of animals and natural creatures that seemed too frightened and cringing away from in this natural habitat was creepy. The very aura of this august, lofty and lavish land was detached of spirit and devoid of warmth.

"I like it." A smiling Olaf pipes up with his unsinkable optimism to break the discomfited atmosphere way up in this stratosphere that Sven and Svala were traversing.

"Why, Olaf? The place looks totally menacing and super sinister." Anna jerks her mesmerized eyes away from the incoming, impactfully intimidating kingdom of the Southern Isles of Denmark to address her strangely naïve snowfriend.

"It's JustHans' home! I can't wait to meet his twelve big brothers, and see his exciting old haunts, and hang out in his cool room…" In his simple naïveté, Olaf's imagination runs away with him and all the warm and fuzzy feeling for Hans and homes in general that the loving snowman held in plentitude. After all, seeing the world through the snow goggles of a child, Olaf couldn't understand how growing up in such a great big, fascinating fun castle, with all its drawbridge moats, huge stables and hedge mazes to play with twelve big brothers in as the baby that _they all had to love_ , could ever be bad.

"Right… His twelve brothers…" It just dawns on Anna that she, in her rash rush to search and find Prince Hans in his homeland, had forgotten about his plethora of aloof brothers. From the way Hans talked about his brethren before, coupled with the fact that they had sold him down the river to an evil pirate, she wasn't sure of how pleasant a visit with them would be. With so many all vying for their aged Father's property and title, some of them surely would be still hanging around.

The girl bites her lip and looks to Kristoff, glad she had her rock beside her to waltz right through that front door of this fearsome kingdom of Denmark and demand to know the whereabouts of one of its princely sons.

The Prince who had been disgraced and disowned. The insidious guy whom one of his victims now would do anything to see alive again.

{"Can you feel if he's here, Kristly?"} The Arendelle Princess shakes her head physically to clear it mentally as she asks her other half the query. Anna's tensed hands around his tight musclebound torso subconsciously ball into uncertain fists.

{I don't know, Baby. All I sense is that there's a bunch of people down there with some bad disposition issues. That bad mojo makes it a little harder to sift through."} The big mountain man taps into his newly recognized Wind Whisperer abilities. But he was only able to delineate that there was some unpleasant sentiments going on down there that he, as an outsider, had no inkling about.

"But we'll face them together." Kristoff reassures his plucky girl, feeling a nervousness from Anna that she rarely owned concerning their questionable welcome to this kingdom, that her own was not on the best of terms with. Papa was never much a fan of the Danes, and her dealings with Hans didn't improve those relations any better.

Anna sighs, the closer Sven was going in for a landing on the ornately pruned and trimmed greenery on the other side front of the Castle lawn, the further away she felt.

Although, practically the moment the young Ice Harvester reaches over to squeeze his young wife's fisted hands at his chest, an incoming sharp metal steel tipped arrow pierces the sky and glances off Kristoff's unsuspecting shoulder.

"Argh!" The man grunts at the stabbing pain in his left arm as the arrowhead nicks several layers of his skin's epidermis. Kristoff's flashing eyes slit as he makes a swift scan of the area below, zeroing in immediately on the darkened figure with a bow and arrow. The stranger was in an offensive stance on the roof of the connected secondary building to the west of the main castle's aqua turrets.

"Kristoff! You've been hit! WHO SHOT THAT?!" As his hot blood begins drip down on her bare arms, Anna viciously screams in horror first, then with flared anger kicking in next something fierce. The ginger girl fights against her protective husband's grip to get a clearer view of the assailant herself, even as Kristoff uses his own bulkier, well-toned body to shield as much as he could over her wriggling form.

"We've got bows and arrows with your name on them, too, Buddy! And ours are bigger!" It was tough enough for the blond man to hang onto his testy and goading, confrontational Feistypants as she shouts out dares. All the while Kristoff has to balance Anna and himself on Sven's frightened back in midflight, as three more pointed arrows zing past their staggered heads.

"Olaf! Cover for Rapunzel! Sven! Svala! Retreat!" Kristoff Bjorgman orders the split-second decision, instantly taking on the responsibility of a no-nonsense field commander. His gentle encouraging voice from just moments before is transformed into assertive man-in-charge mode.

Olaf, on the female reindeer, quickly wobbles onto Rapunzel's lap, then throws his branchy arms out across her vulnerable torso.

"No! We have to get in there! Sven! Don't turn around!" Anna stubbornly struggles to peek out defiantly in between Kristoff's shielded embrace to jut out her cute little chin. She physically fights with her larger bodied hubby to get a look at the now pair of inept archers lobbing arrow after arrow at the two flying reindeer and their riders with no caveat or reason.

As obedient Svala bows to the Snow Prince's sagacity with Rapunzel and her defending, stretched out wide snowman on board, she dutifully makes a beeline for the woods. Sven's mournful eyes gaze around the back of his head at the opposing signals of the confusing couple on his back.

"Sven! Go!" Kristoff barks out at his reindeer best friend, exasperated, as he keeps a trained eye on their attackers.

"Sven! No! Keep going forward!" Anna contradicts, tugging a hand at Sven's reins to reverse their retreat.

"Sven!" Kristoff was getting frustrated. Even if, long ago he had learned that his peppery perky Princess was a stubborn force be reckoned with.

Poor Sven flies around in a tug-of-war circle of confusion for several seconds until the friendly reindeer bull was dizzy.

 ** _WHIZZ!_**

But before he had the chance to decide to turn back or not, another arrow comes dangerously close and shaves a whisker off unfortunate Sven's disoriented muzzle.

"That's it." Resigned, Kristoff starts to pull out from his strapped back his own trusty Saami longbow and take aim at their attacking archer assailants.

 ** _T'CHI!_**

Though flying high in the breezy sky, his unbalanced girl pulling him every which way against his dizzied reindeer buddy, the Wind Whisperer takes precise aim with a duet of his prized Saami bow's bone tipped, gold shafted arrows and shoots them simultaneously off –

 ** _T'CHI! T'CHI!_**

Kristoff's double shot arrow flies so straight and true as the wind he commanded aids their course towards the castle extension's rise behind the façade that the twin pair of dark hooded inept archers were reloading their weapons behind. The pair were arguing loudly with one another about missing the target and which one was more skilled than the other in his marksmanship, all the while –

 ** _SCHKKK!_**

The bone tipped arrowhead's direct path towards the hooded archers' unprotected heart ventricle chest area takes a last-minute detour to fly upwards instead. The arrows rather flap up their two hoods from their obscured faces and pin the pair of brash, bickering, brats to the roof's front brick top façade.

Anna squints her eyes against the summer's bright afternoon sky that mirrored the distracting reflective moat below surrounding prestigious Egeskov Castle.

The one young man on the left that Kristoff had pinned to the rear stable house roof had short curly orange red hair, a fully freckled face with a ruddy complexion and a sad excuse for uneven bright orange sideburns. The other, had an oddly misshapen face with a wild blonde mane of spiked hair that was almost comical, if it was not so disturbing. Though the pair could not be more disparate looking, the reaction was twin-like duplicate.

"Hey! No fair! You've got a flying reindeer!" The two equally annoying voices cry out indignantly as they try to pull away from their capes that were secured to the wall by Kristoff's arrows.

Sven hovers near the stable house roof section of the castle, so Kristoff could get a better look at them.

The pair of men, who were older than they appeared, equally stare at the gingerbread girl and her big blond fella on their magical flying reindeer, with nothing but disdain on their not so-comely faces.

"We're under attack! We're under attack!" The pair of spoiled thirty-four-year-old men who rarely acted their age, cry out with the same impious exhilaration as they did when they were eight-year-old spoiled boys. These twins were always telling fibs on one another and reveled devilishly in torturing their littlest brother and then run to their strict daddy, cackling at their mischief.

"You just wait until we tell our Father! He's the King who will sentence you both to the death penalty for your nerve in attacking this kingdom's heroic princes!"

Princes Ruddi and Rune, now fully grown in body, though arguably stunted in mind as quarrelsome, peevish and bratty boys the same as they were as rotten kids, give Kristoff and his arrow trained on them, a turned up nose and a long, belligerent stare.

"Shouldn't you have asked who we are before you started shooting?! You boys can put someone's eye out!" Anna berates the two as if they were children, everything about them getting her ginger ire up already.

"That's not the way Father taught us to face enemies, little girl! You shoot first. And ask questions later. That's the way conquerors win!" The ugly blonde man on a warmonger rant, goads Anna defiantly, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes around in his unsettlingly strange shaped head, as if to keep their attention trained on him.

And it works.

Kristoff's focus was off the other sneaky twin during the yellow blonde one's odd ravings. The muddy orange haired man with double-jointed arms allows him to unbutton himself out of his black cape that he slips out from under. Laughing all the while, the burnt orange, badly barbered boy makes a wild spree down into the stable house complex to call for backup against this small, strange invasion force that enigmatically had unconventionally made it across Egeskov fortress's impermeable moat.

"You're gonna get it now, you insignificant little flying bugs! Egeskov has a contingent of military guards that will shoot your overfed flying reindeer out of the sky! And we will enjoy watching you fall screaming into the moat, as you sink and drown, like the insects you are! Or maybe, even better, the crocodiles or…or… the Nökken that we have in this here moat will tear the flesh from your bones and eat you alive first!" The antagonistically bellicose vivid yellow haired Prince Ruddi taunts Kristoff and Anna with his threats of certain doom about the fearful mythological creature lurking beneath those dark waters below.

"Eww! That's gross!" Anna wrinkles her nose at this Danish Prince's fertile, if not repulsively gruesome, imagination.

"Don't worry. He's bluffing. I'm sorry to have to break it to you, pal, but there aren't any crocodiles, or mythological sea creatures, for that matter, in these parts of the woods. I'm pretty sure." Kristoff was more put off by the thought of a deputation of armed military men, who really might be hiding inside of this fortress castle. That bothered Kristoff more than a wild, far-flung tale of evil sea monsters and the like roaring through the dank, dark waters.

 _Not that I haven't seen my share of sea monsters lately…_

"Wait, wait-wait! You're Princes here?! Then, you'll know if Prince Hans has retur–" Anna, not daunted in the least by the idea of being stormed en masse by hordes of aggressive military guards itching for a fight. Nor the threat of some vindictive sea creature swirling in strangely moving shadows beneath the murky waters down there.

No, she was more intent on asking this most… _Unattractive -_ _Okay, he's downright homely!_ \- brother of Hans, if their youngest Lillebror had returned yet the castle he was born to.

"There! See! I wasn't drinking again, Captain Jorgensen! Don't just stand there! Fire!" Pugnacious Rune was frantic to prove his flighty story of flying reindeer carrying invaders near the capital spires after he bumped into the Captain of the King's guard doing his afternoon rounds.

The eleventh in-line Prince of the Southern Isles had raced through the complex like a blithering idiot, proclaiming the far-fetched attack to the castle guards who disbelieved this mischievous Prince's veracity.

The large set, severely square jawed and well-armed _Haeran_ trained, Royal Danish Army special forces military man, levels his army issue breech-loading carbine rifle from across where he and Prince Rune were inside the main castle's opposing tower turret window.

The experienced rifleman aims his weapon that had an explosive range of over one kilometer, directly at Sven's unaware head. The crack shot prepares to shoot the long-range rifle off, right between the reindeer hero's broken single antler it had zeroed in his sights…

"Sven! Serpentine back!" Willing the winds to help with his faithful companion to dodge away from the incoming bullets in retreat, Kristoff realizes that, with the great equalizer of gunpowder's firepower, even his mighty Saami longbow didn't stand a chance of disarming a fired bullet's missile.

"Anna! Keep your head down!" The blonde mountain man replaces his bow and arrow to its quiver strapped to his back and instead wraps his wriggling Princess up in his shielded embrace. Sven the reindeer makes a fall back, tail dive away from the apparently fully armed battlements and aggressive against intruders castle fortress.

"Just peachy. Talk about unfriendly territory. Papa was right about these war-like Danes. That didn't go exactly as planned. Maybe this isn't going to be so easy." Anna grumbles under her breath, already a bit prejudiced against this race of Scandinavian conquerors of old. She folds her disappointed arms together and grouses at her visit to the unhappiest kingdom on earth.

"Am I glad I married you! And not into that nutty, unsociable place." Anna makes a sour face at the kingdom they had just kicked the dust off their feet thereof. She squeezes Kristoff's sore shoulder tight like a security blanket.

"Gee, thanks for your vote of confidence." Kristoff mutters, tolerating his glanced wound with a smirk at his oh-so-complimentary wife.

"No matter how dreamy eyed, charming voiced, or good dancers their princes are. No matter how beautiful their castle's scenic grounds could be, I would NEVER want to end up here. And their welcome committee for visiting dignitaries sure can use a facelift." Giving Kristoff's neck nape a familiar nuzzle, a grimacing Anna seemed unfazed by the unfriendly fire that this hostile kingdom of Denmark's violent rejection offered.

But her heart was more troubled not to be any closer to finding that elusive Prince Hans, even here in his own land…

* * *

 _Some time later in the Ice_ _Palace_ _,_ _Norway_ _…_

Elsa spent the morning training her Papa in the great outdoors of her picturesque North Mountain's liberating possibilities. There, the King had inspected her Ice Castle's architectural artistry from the outside with awe. Soon thereafter, the pair of ice wielders built together some practice cryokinetic slide creations; constructive Elsa then challenged her Papa to a frost fingertips' focused skeet shooting match. As the afternoon wore on, together they had some intense snowball fights of a throwback childhood missed in between training that motherly Idun enjoyed watching so much she clapped and laughed harder than she had in years.

The wonderful afternoon continued as Elsa and her Mother joined Gerda in a cooking fest in the servants' kitchen that soon changed into a womanly gentle lesson about love for the sad-eyed young Queen.

With dinner soon to be ready, Idun and Elsa had decided to wander back downstairs to see what their recovering father had gotten up to after his invigorating rehabilitation session.

Marshmallow (A.K.A. Snow Beast) had been introduced to the game of draughts and had gotten the hang of checkers so well that the blundering lummox of a gargantuan snow monster had almost actually bested the Checkers King. That is, until Agdar's cool adrenaline kicked in and he pulled off a last minute win, toppling down the remainder of Marshmallow's snowgies to magically transfer into his overfilled ice box full of bouncing up and down pawns.

But never one to give up a serious competition, or a ready contender willing to play him, King Agdar had brainstormed to switch the simple game of checkers to a more challenging pass time of chess.

In the chilled Ice Palace's Great Hall, where the huge chessboard had been set, Agdar had taught a baffled Marshmallow the new game's more complex and complicated rules.

The Ice King had outfitted a new batch of excited-to-play snowgies from the seemingly endless supply with cryokinetically formed costume gear. From ice castle rock pillars with snowgie eyes peeking out for the rooks Agdar fashioned, to holy robes and long tall hats by the ice milliner for his bishops to wear. Ice statue horses and armor helmets were created for his knights, majestic dresses and queenly garb with delicate tiaras on top of the chosen Queens (once the androgynous snowgies identified themselves as leaning more towards the female persuasion). And the royal becaped and majestic crowned atop their snowy mound heads Kings, were complete with ice formed sceptres as this ice chess match's mock coronated snowgie main piece.

"My white knight to your black rook. No chance of castling king-side or queen-side for you, Mr. Snow Beast, with both your rooks captured now." With a haughty chuckle at his own masterful playing, King Agdar almost pompously orders his snowgie chess pawn with a pointed frosty forefinger to skip and jump over his opponent's diagonally vulnerable back row piece.

So that left only the black King and a few scattered black defenders on the board to fall for the ruler of this land to dominate the match.

"Ha ha! Hand over your final rook, Snow Beast! You've only three pieces left and my board is nearly full. You are not going to come even close to playing me to a draw this time, my snowy friend. I am still the Chess King, after all! And I am coming for your Queen next. So beware." Agdar chortles arrogantly, his eyes glowing with an eerie icy white triumph, his chest puffed up with kingly pride to stand over such a victorious board.

"My, what a magnanimous display of friendly sportsmanship between competitors, my coldhearted love." Now another Queen that Agdar had set his sights on and seized a long time ago, speaks up for the lorded over, mute Marshmallow's crushed, sad-faced behalf.

"Well. You always were a softy for the losing side, Idun. Especially since you were usually at the receiving end of my victory." Feeling quite revitalized from their refreshing outdoor excursion earlier, not to mention this competitive match of wits and wills for his masculine exercised psyche, Agdar teases his wife.

"Is that so, oh honored and lordly Majestic One? May I, a simple naïve Swedish Princess, with my humble abilities, be permitted to aid this poor _Snow Beast_ in this challenge?" Idun saucily words her question to Agdar with a pair of innocent, fluttering lashed, doe-like eyes up at him.

"But of course, my love. If you don't mind much suffering as you walk straight into the jaws of defeat. Please don't take it too hard, my Queen, when you both lose." The lifelong Chessmaster talks down his life partner in the icy frigid way that made her hairs stand on end when he was so aggravatingly full of himself like this.

"Why, thank you, Your Majesty. I will try my best not to fail your expectations." The diminutive Queen smiles as she glides seamlessly across the ice floor of the Palace's Front Hall to stand by Marshmallow's plaintive side.

"Mmhh?"" The Snow Beast looks down with forelorn eyes at his tiny defender who was empathic enough to join his losing team.

Elsa, who had been lost in her own thoughts, had wandered up the stairs in need of glimpsing the memory of a certain handsome Prince who had saved her soul from committing a terrible crime in that very balcony room. But she is pulled out of her melancholy when she overhears her parents jibing one another over this not-so-friendly game she had dreamed up for Papa's combined therapy and amusement.

As she watches her father impatiently wait for his turn and subconsciously twirl his debonair mustache, Elsa softly giggles at her funny parent. But she was impressed by his dress-up fashion show of the ice costumed snowgies parading around in the box of chess pieces that she was seated beside on her effortlessly formed ice throne. Her little creations hop up and down against her skirt, plop on Elsa's lap as all of them watch together in audience to this comical satire between her mother and father.

All through those years of enforced solitude in Arendelle castle, Idun often had watched her husband and Kai play this game of intellect as serious chess partners. She had endured through many of her pompous King's gloating at nights upon winning victory after victory over the chess match with his best friend/former tutor/royal minister.

But Agdar's fragile spirit needed a boost every now and then when his competitive male soul was hungry for a good mental battle of strategy and sparring match of cunning, as chess was invented centuries before to satisfy.

Although, at those times, the Norwegian King was unaware of one little tidbit of information.

Idun let him win.

"If I may take the lead in this round, dear Mr. Marshmallow?" Idun's sad eyes melt the grumbling snow creature to metaphorically a puddle at her feet. The huge monster nods, subdued at her gentle melodic voice.

"Call him 'Snow Beast', please, Idun." Agdar's monotone baritone stubbornly stresses the renamed title that was more befitting the thirty-five foot tall gargantuan.

"I like Marshmallow." The sweet-toothed Queen mumbles under her breath glibly as her quick, intelligent mind considers her strategic options for the game.

"Now let me see…" Idun's lithe form moves around the area to study the huge chessboard. There, poor, bullied Marshmallow had left on his haphazard side of the board, only a stray Bishop that was some paces to the right of his unmoved King, and the black Queen who was standing before her King in some wild stab at defense tactics.

"It's a hopeless situation, Idun. You might as well give up this foolish optimism, my pet." King Agdar says, leaning confidently against Elsa's chair back in the midst of the Great Hall. Queen Idun appears to ignore him, her eyes continuing to assess the chessboard.

"Not bad for a creature of the ice, who never has played the game by its rules before." The Arendelle Queen comments in sympathy as she pets Marshmallow's frozen hand where he was kneeling beside her.

"Are you blind, Woman? Just take a look at that board. Your new friend there is losing rather badly." Smug Agdar says with an arrogant snigger at his tenderhearted wife's commiserate solicitude for his dumb (in the literal sense) opponent.

"I wasn't talking about _Marshmallow_." Idun replies over her shoulder dismissively to her full-of-it hubby, with an insinuating smile on her pursed lips, though her eyes never look up to meet his. She was about to call out her first move to the scoffing, indignant man who got her cutting remark's point entirely.

Elsa could not stifle her chuckle as she watches, with prayerful joy to have back her entertaining parents as they play the warring competitive game her ice created. Elsa watches from the sidelines of the board with her enthusiastic snowgies bouncing at her elegant feet, on her lap, even one or two perched on the Ice Queen's platinum head.

Insulted, Agdar shoots a frosty glance at his insolent child with his mouth open in disapproving disbelief for her open betrayal.

"Sorry, Papa." A rosy cheeked Elsa subdues the residue of her chuckles, choosing to let her woes ebb for a few moments and enjoy this spectacle before her.

"Anyway. Let us continue as dignified competitors for the remainder of the match." Snobbish King Agdar berates his wife and daughter as he overlooks his injured feelings to share a munificent smile with his favorite sparring partner, also known as his wife.

Idun's eyes twinkle back at him in that look of utter love and devotion that he craved more than any victory round as reward already.

"Yes, I agree entirely. It is our turn I believe." Idun intakes a full breath of cool air to focus on the board again before she speaks.

"Black Bishop to take third long diagonal white pawn." The sepia brown-haired Queen says quite expertly with quiet conviction as Marshmallow physically moves her commanded piece to take out one of the King's army.

"Well done, my sweet." Not meaning to be condescending, Agdar congratulates Idun's mild win to capture one of his most unimportant pawns left on the board.

"White knight to take black Bishop. Forgive me, my love, to ruin your ingenious plan. But there are no quarters for pusillanimous timidity in any formidable challenge." Agdar says in his grandiose manner, as his cryokinetics easily function to have his knight piece jump her attacking Black Bishop that was now within the line of sight to claim his White King.

Agdar telekinetically removes the oohing and ahhing snowgie that was dressed up in her black Bishop's tall hat and vespers to land in his capture box.

"I believe you are absolutely correct, min alskare. We must all be equal to life's challenges, and never back down from our dreams and aspirations when we have God-given drive to succeed in them." Idun turns to Elsa to give her interested daughter a heartening wink before the older Queen sings out, quite decisively:

"Black Queen eight spaces vertically to take the White King." Queen Idun masterfully maneuvered her own sacrificed Bishop out of her Queen's path to claim the white pawn that had been standing in the way of her opponent's King. She knew full well that her well-placed for obvious attack Bishop would be Agdar's white knight's target. In doing so, she dislodged the critical piece from his own King's defense.

That left the field wide-open for her Queen to take down his King, as Marshmallow slowly moves their black snowgie Queen eight spaces forward at Idun's musical count.

"One, two, three, four, keep going Marshmallow, dear. Five, six, seven, and eight."

"What?! No!" Caught offguard by this excellently performed classic three step series of moves to overthrow his entire chess kingdom, Agdar protests in deposed shock, hanging his astounded head to his palm.

"—And checkmate, my love." Idun's melodic strains sing out as Marshmallow harmonizes with his happy crew of cheering snowgies in the bleachers behind him, all excited for the home team advantage win.

A smiling Elsa steps in here to consolidate her mother's clever stratagem into reality by declaring:

"Marshmallow and Queen Idun of Arendelle are the winners of this chess match! Congratulations to our fine participants in an amazing competition." Elsa gives both her parents a brilliant, glowing smile.

"Are we not presented with awards, your Majesty? It is customary in this nation to reward laudable victories, I believe." Idun sends the idea up the flagpole as she moves forward towards her husband, all innocent-eyed.

"Of course." Elsa smiles amiably to her mother as she pins on some quickly formed bluish white ice ribbon that she creates in the palm of her artistic hands. One ribbon was for #1 Chess Queen Idun, and the other for her partner, #1 Chess King Marshmallow. The big snow monster gives a great big bellow and a toothy pleased as punch grin as he glows down at his comparatively tiny first prize ribbon.

"And you must make a special award for your Papa too, Elsa. Knowing his indubitable skills, he no doubt won the draughts match earlier. Am I correct, my Checker King?" The Queen saunters up to her pouty-faced husband, running a familiar warm hand along his jaw line invitingly.

"You are always correct, my Beauty." Pushing aside his disappointed defeat to revel in her healing touch, Agdar enjoyed the attentions of his jovial wife and sweet daughter surrounding him as Elsa skillfully crafts a winner's badge for him, too.

It was akin to the eight-pointed silver medal starburst and delicately faceted cross bottony designed medallion that the naval man of his highest rank of Admiral of the fleet and caliber of genuinely heroic officer King deserved and used to wear as part of his kingly uniform's attire.

The new ice medallion Elsa mentally created from memory was shimmering and beautiful in every detail. From its starburst background with cross bottony etching to the blue jewel embellishment, with a ring of ice diamonds around its white-blue-white enamel ring, this metal was identical to her father's original naval Storkors - his Grand Cross. Agdar was always so proud to let his older girl carefully shine and polish the diamond studded medal as a tiny babe, instilling her love of country's patriotism.

The silver and gold medallion that hung from his collar chain for formal occasions and the silver star the King wore for the kingdom of Norway on his left chest symbolized ' _Ret og Sandhed' –_ Justice and Truth. It was one of Elsa's first memories, way back when she would be lovingly held to her devoted father's secure chest.

"You remembered every last detail of my Storkor, Snow Angel." Agdar proudly breathes as he gazes down to his unadorned jacket to where his daughter was now attaching an ice version of _Den Kongelige Norske Sankt Olavs Orden_ (The Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf's) most prestigious badge of honor.

"I was always so proud that my Papa was strong and brave to have been recognized by the Navy that celebrated his courage and valor." With tears in her eyes, Elsa, finally able to express her emotions without losing control of her ice, smiles up at her Papa. She plants a kiss on his cheek as she ice tacks on his new medal to replace the real one that had been long ago claimed and stolen away by that ruthless pirate, who cruelly took so much from their family.

"Now you're making your old Papa blush, Snow Angel." Agdar's bluish pale cheeks were indeed coloring to a more normal shaded peachy pink for his loving child's spoken caring.

Watching the tender scene with gladness, Queen Idun gratefully accepts the cup of hot mocha which Agdar shares a sip of after Gerda comes bustling out with a tray from the connected kitchen. She had brewed the hot steaming liquid she'd made in Oaken's steam percolator for the royal family she would always dotingly care for. They both give the plump sweet-faced woman with the kind eyes a grateful smile for all she's done for them over the years.

Clearing her throat, Idun decides this warm fuzzy moment may just be the opportunity she had been waiting for.

"Speaking of deserved awards… Don't you agree, as this blessed country of Norway's sovereigns, we should recognize all the heroes who gave their selflessly valiant service to preserve and protect our nation during this most harrowing event in our history?" The wise older Queen begins to weave the plans in her web concerning duty and recognition for great deeds she knew would play at Agdar's stoic heartstrings.

"Yes, my Queen, you are so right, yet again. Those brave men—"

"—And brave women." Idun, not entirely too conventional as to what roles Victorian era females must conform to, pipes up, giving her overbearing, yet fair-minded, mate a raised brow that demanded equality.

"Indeed, my Queen. **_All_** those who gave us assistance and aid in our desperate time of need must be recognized. Our fellow citizens who paid the ultimate cost of their lives in that poor decimated fishing community in Lofoten, I will never forget. And those fearless naval officers who had taken, under bold daring leadership, steps to face down that evil pirate and the vicious fearsome sea monster he had become, must be commended for their sacrifice and patriotism. Yes, I will advise Kai to set these procedures into motion, to ensure that the Crown cares for the wounded and distinguishes those who are praiseworthy." Quite pleased with his just ruling as he gets back into the swing of kingdom leadership, Agdar begins to move from the Great Hall of the Ice Palace to the Servant's Wing to converse with his chief advisor and Royal Counselor on these matters of state.

"Although…" Queen Idun skillfully lets her singular, uncertain word dangle in the crisp cold air as she snuggles herself deep into her fur shawl wrap to take another seductive sip of her coffee imbued cocoa.

"You were saying, Idun?" Agdar pauses midstride, having that gnawing feeling that his frisky Queen had something further on her mind tonight that she wished to say outright, but was withholding back in an enigmatic tease.

"I was only considering…for their incredible bravery and sacrifice and constant help to our girls, coming to their rescue time and time again from that villain on their amazing, more than two thousand kilometer journey between Arendelle arid Lofoten, and everywhere dangerous in between…" Queen Idun starts out, assessing her husband's mood as she goes. "The first and highest awards should go to our own dear niece Rapunzel, whom both Anna and Elsa consider as a sister now, and her wonderful husband Prince Eugene who, I hear, made this all possible." Idun spins a sunshiny disposition to one Flynn Rider's debatable role in this entire fiasco/ miracle.

"Yes, of course. Our Prussian relations were both remarkable in the face of the adversity, and will receive civilian dignitary awards for their part in the effort." Agdar nods, always being fond of Idun's niece, sweet Princess Rapunzel, even if he was a little uneasy around that nephew-in-law's criminal tendencies. But he would abide by an approving, smiling Elsa that Prince Eugene could be classed as a hero in this instance.

"And of course, his heroic brother Prince Hans, who gave so willingly of himself, risking life and limb for our nation, saving both of our girls countless times selflessly. The lifelong naval officer had been inducted to our Navy by Elsa to be Kommander of one of our proud vessels, to hasten pursuit of rescuing Anna. And then, promoted later by you as Vise Admiral for performing his services above and beyond the call of duty. Certainly that noble Prince deserves the Navy's highest meritorious award for his chivalry. The _Storkors_ , I believe you call your _Grand Cross_. And a knighthood, perhaps?" Queen Idun says quite naturally as she finishes up her long-winded spiel while she leads her dumbfounded husband by the arm through the vestibule into the Ice Palace's drawing room. There, Kristoff had placed a sofa near the fireplace for Anna on frosty North Mountain nights, and Gerda had already set it ablaze for the Queen mother in these chilly conditions.

Here, at **that** young man's particular name, coupled with ' _services above and beyond the call of duty'_ , recalls a certain suspicious kiss of life he had witnessed in the heat of battle between Prince Hans and his insensible daughter, the wary father could never forget, especially. King Agdar's chary attention immediately shoots a look at Elsa.

Her widened eyes were just as surprised as her Papa's by her bold mother's sudden suggestion concerning Prince Hans Westergaard being sworn in as a knight of their realm.

But in her exhilarated mind, considering all the innumerable heroic things that he had done for her… for her _kingdom_ … Elsa could think of no one more deserving than he…

"And, of course, Anna's new husband, Snow Prince Kristoff, should also receive some commendation, as a gallant hero of our nation for his courageous services in defending our children and saving our kingdom from utter destruction. His mother, the Snow Queen, herself, was so proud of his achievements, I can assure you personally, and would love to attend the ceremony, I'm sure." Queen Idun continues on speaking, as if nothing she said was uncomfortable or out of the ordinary, all only in appropriate procedure for their royal response to commend those conquering heroes.

"Wha-a-at? Commendations? Knighthood? The Order of St. Olaf's Grand Cross?" A swallowing in disbelief King Agdar's high-pitched, cracking baritone was quite flummoxed by his wife's incredible to-do-list of ceremonial praiseworthy commendations to be passed out, especially to these two young men who had their eyes on his daughters. Here, the King was just about to put down his foot on the matter, but Idun continued on, like a steamroller over his ice skating rink.

"Oh, yes, min alskare. We wouldn't want the other royal kingdoms of our watching Scandinavian neighbors involved to view of our lack and lateness of recognition as a sign of disrespect, would we? It may cause a stir of our out of touch ignorance." Idun speaks in her most snobbish tone on the subject of showing deference to, and desire for world leaders to respect them, as she knew her uppity Agdar held much credence to.

"No… Yes... We must not besmirch the good name of Arendelle for withholding any appreciation where it is justly due. I **was** planning on holding such a ceremony, Idun, when I had fully recovered enough to return to Arendelle Castle. I know my duties, make no mistake." Affronted to be called on his lack of civic duty, the dedicated to service Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret, King Agdar was versed in protocol up and down.

He had no problem with passing out awards to the Navy men and civilians, in fact he would be honored to honor them. No, his main concern was focused on just a single one of Idun's proposed nominees. His restless fingers twirl his moustache nervously while Agdar petulantly kicks around the undesirable thought of giving his nation's highest honor for chivalry of valor to a Dane.

And one who is interested in his daughter, too. Never mind that rascal thief, whom his niece Rapunzel dragged into the family. And as for Anna's Ice Harvester/mountain man… Agdar's reverence to the Snow Queen's lineage would just have to be enough to squeak her boy by, even if the dirt covered lad was obviously raised as a commoner all his life.

 _Must my wonderful girls be involved in a world of inadequate men?_

"But I don't know what we can do to save face, Agdar. Those heroic young brothers, Prince Eugene and Prince Hans had left so soon after their amazing courageous acts in a life or death struggle to defeat that vile Draugen to protect your girls, myself included, without waiting or seeking for any recognition. Before we had the chance to even thank either improperly, they disappeared. So I know not what dishonorable disrepute will befall our kingdom, should the word get out that they were not appropriately commended for their selfless - and _unpaid_ – services to our country in its hour of need." Idun knew how to play her man like a violin, as he responds exactly as she expected he would to her orchestration.

"Then we will send word for that pair of rapscallions to return to Arendelle to receive their commendations, by Jove!" Just coming short of plebian swearing, his deep voice raises in volume to ring through the still Ice Palace enough to frighten the scurrying around snowgies to hide their faces beneath Elsa's queenly purple cape and Idun's long skirt.

Agdar feels the icy hackles on the back of his neck rise at the very idea of bowing and scraping at the feet of those two young rascal whippersnappers. The one was a self-professed criminal rogue; the other a well mannered, oh-so-cultured heartbreaker.

"If you're so convinced of our kingdom's dishonor if we forgo this frivolous outdated process, Idun, then so be it. Elsa! Call Kai here to set up the arrangements and date of the awards ceremony immediately! I will be ready to perform my duty, presently enough!" Barking orders out in anger, the haughty King, who truly did hold his nation's bestowing of awards to those who deserved it in high regard, despite his biting words, must ignore his standpoint of being a jealous father to show the distinguished deportment his sophisticated wife was shaming him to forbear.

"Happy now, my Queen?" The Ice King's reddened, vexed face proved to his wife that he was acting all too normal human and overtly male to suffer too badly for their idealistic quarrel.

"What an extraordinarily grand idea, Agdar! We'll be able to kill two birds with one stone, as they say. Elsa!" It was now the Queen's turn to give an edict to her run ragged, formerly crestfallen daughter.

"When you arrive in Corona you must invite Prince Eugene and Prince Hans, who is still hopefully with his brother, to come to Arendelle for the awards ceremony, to be held two weeks from today. Your Papa will be ready by then, I am certain." The Queen looks to her husband with a sweet, encouraging smile.

"Wait! Elsa is traveling to Corona?! What – when – why?!" Sputtering out the layers of questions, the Ice King's mean temperature drops at the unwelcomed thought of his daughter, who had been working closely with them to help teach her Papa control of his ice, would so abruptly leave her own Ice Palace.

"To pick up my dear sister, Arianna, of course! Didn't I tell you last night, Agdar? It's already all been decided, my love. I don't want my Primmy to find out from anyone else's lips first! My poor older sister and old Friedrich might just keel over with the shock of our return. No, Elsa will travel to Corona to break the happy news to her aunt and her uncle personally." Queen Idun makes the decree to her monarch who holds up and then lets down his overruled hands to fall back to his sides.

"I know you're not quite up to par yet, min alskare, but I can already feel your improvement under Elsa's tutoring in this beautiful Ice Palace's environment. A little more rest, and recuperation time here, I am certain you will be stable enough to return to Arendelle and give our people a national celebration after all these long, hard, lonely years, very soon. And my dear sister will be here with her family and we can all celebrate and attend the knighthood and awards ceremony together, too! I cannot tell you how excited I am by the thought of seeing my dear Primmy again. Being with our citizens again on such a joyous occasion! I cannot express how happy that idea makes me feel. Thank you. Oh, thank you, my darling husband. You're so good to me!" Throwing herself bodily in his arms, Queen Idun, genuinely giddy inside her heart to reunite with her beloved sibling, also knew her man so very well that she mastered the art of how to manipulate her mate into resigned submission and at her total bidding by now.

"You are welcome…? My love…" Feeling a tad swept up by his wife's enthusiasm as she wraps him around her little finger in a whirlwind of new situations, King Agdar's riled up coolness melts under her tender appreciative embraces and the multiples showered kisses that were growing rather passionate by the minute.

Agdar's strong firm voice and matching resolve in rejecting those young men becomes a bit weak and frail under her persuasive gaze.

"But should Elsa travel on her own?" Like a Papa, Agdar starts to worry for his child's safety more than any other subject his overloaded mind was now dealing with.

"Agdar. Our Elsa's a big girl now. She's been a fair and beloved Queen to our people for over two years now. She can do anything she sets her mind to do. I know we can trust her to make the right decisions now. We may have made many mistakes in the past, but I praise God we didn't fail her upbringing in leading her in His ways, Agdar. " Idun gives her spiritual eldest girl a motivating smile that rests back upon her worried husband's brow which she smoothes away with tender fingers.

"' _Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I have tasted and believed in Thy commandments.' "_ Psalm 119:6

To waylay her mate's mortal anxieties, Idun recites aloud some words of wisdom from the greatest instruction Book ever written that she and her husband lastingly taught to both Elsa and Anna as children.

Agdar smiles, letting her healing words seep into his soul.

"Your mother is right, yet again, my Snow Angel. I only fear for your traveling by boat in those treacherous waters of the Skagerrak, for all the trouble it caused us all those years ago, between here and Corona." Agdar airs his justified worry at ocean travel through the very same waters that the poor ill-fated Snow class vessel HmNos _Idun_ went down in.

Even though Agdar was a lifelong seaman, who adored his Navy, the Admiral of the fleet still feared for his little girl. And that fear was starting to overwhelm him in frost crystals of ice building on his breath and brow.

"Please Papa. Don't worry. I'll be fine." With a warm smile, Elsa wipes the icy frost forming on his brow that was still recovering and learning to deal with his frozen powers.

"We already have asked Kai for the sea weather reports in that area and all is clear for the next week or two. Elsa will be safe to travel." Idun comforts her frigid love, rubbing determinedly at her husband's cold arm with the heat of friction and the warmth of her devotion.

"Besides. Who needs a boat, anyway?" The independent young Ice Queen steps her high heels in here to assure her parents by showing off her magical ice sled that she had mastered to appear beneath her feet.

"I have the freedom of the sky." The liberated girl proudly declares as she gracefully flits up the spiraling staircase to the upper section of her spacious Ice Palace's interior.

"Not without a proper escort, you don't, young lady." Calling up to her retreating form, her troubled Papa feels he must put his frosty foot down here on this point.

"Papa. Anna and I have gone anywhere we wished, even outside of Arendelle - **by ourselves** \- for these past two years. We're quite independent young women now. I truly do not require a guardian for this routine short trip to visit our Aunt and Uncle." Elsa attempts to quell his qualms on the matter with calm rational explanation of how she and Anna had become well accustomed – _and enjoyed_ \- roaming outside the palace walls.

"Proper protocol dictates you, as an unattached, young female, not to mention the foremost important member of royalty, must be escorted to and from far more insignificant distances." Agdar was a man who lived by adherence to the strict moral code of the day. No tender female child of his was to go traipsing all over the map, by herself, without at least one male sentry or guardsman bodyguard in attendance.

"Agdar, dear, that is an antiquated notion for olden times! Elsa is a modern woman who, as you full well understand her capabilities, can handle herself responsibly in unfamiliar territory. And going to fetch my sister in Prussia is hardly a perilous task, even for a woman." Queen Idun chirps in, sounding quite the liberated contemporary, versus her old-fashioned husband's traditional conventionality.

"Disparage my beliefs as antediluvian, if you may, Idun, but I still do not feel comfortable with allowing my precious child to travel abroad alone, even to visit a relative. The subject is closed on the matter. Elsa, knowing your mother will protest my current frailty, I myself cannot go, so Kai will accompany you—" King Agdar would not yield on this point, as the unstable ice beginning to crawl up his spine at the anxious fear that made him rather severeand domineering.

"Oh, Papa! You and Mama need Minister Kai to manage things here…" Imagining the difficulty of speedy travel exacerbated by her older, stuffy, by-the-book guardian's accompaniment, Elsa ponders over the problem for a few moments of deliberation, when the thirty-five foot tall elephant in the room catches her attention.

Literally.

"If I take Marshmallow with me as my bodyguard, surely, you would consent? I did create him to be my strong defender, after all. And he does abide by my command instantly." The Ice Queen extols her humongous creation's loyalty and strength, gazing down at the enormous snow being with a hopeful smile.

"I…suppose that your _Snow Beast_ will be an adequate guardian to escort you to collect your Aunt Arianna from Corona in my absence. But I'll only acquiesce on one other condition." Agdar makes the decision after assessing more critically the humongous snow monster's potential qualifications and obedience to his Mistress, Elsa.

"Yes, Papa?" Elsa asks tentatively, unsure of his next query.

"You must call him 'Snow Beast'. Do not ever let anyone find out you named your frightfully large and wondrous snow creature 'Marshmallow'." The righteous Ice King shakes his head at the fluffy, sugary name Olaf gave to Elsa's bouncer. It hardly suited a tough cookie like the ice armored up, magnificent Snow Beast and, in his mind, diminished its intimidating purpose.

"Agreed." His solemn-faced daughter gives in to the impractical request, feeling Papa's rigidly frozen tree limb bending in her favor as she and Mama exchange excited glances at this theatre of the battle won. At least enough for the girl to look to the road ahead with not as much trepidation, as hope.

So, with total trust in her Saviour to show her the rest of the way through the maze of her heart forward, Elsa fearlessly leaps from her high perch on the staircase plateau to glide upon the thin air molecules transformed ice that the gifted child transforms at her leisure, to land in Marshma—eh, _Snow Beast's—_ big open palm, her eyes full of far-off hope as she looks up to the vaulted skylight of her impressive palace for holy strength.

 _"'But those who hope in the Lord_ _will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;_ _they will run and not grow weary,_ _they will walk and not be faint.'"_ Isaiah 40: 31

It was Elsa's turn now to deliver the stirring verse on her heart, spoken through her whispered, wistful lips.

 _"_ Just take care not to 'soar' on your 'wings' too far away from us, my precious Snow Angel." King Agdar finally relents with a sigh as he, quite demonstrative fatherly, pets his girl's platinum head when Marshmallow lowers his elevated hand to let Elsa draw near.

"And Elsa, if you do, by happenstance, bump into that young Dane again, be sure to inform him that, by not collecting his knighthood and naval service commendations that I am hereby issuing to my…ahem… _Vise Admiral…_ I will personally be offended by any enlisted officer's dishonorable conduct of disrespect, and abandonment of his naval post to my kingdom." Her Papa words the veiled threat with a serious look on his handsome cool features as he, at his wife's request, considers his pensive daughter's position.

Though he tried to ignore it these past few days, Elsa's sad eyes were lonely. She had been trying to put on a brave face all while training her Papa in between breaks when she paced around the empty Palace, staring out the windows with forlorn expressions like a caged animal yearning to be free…

Agdar considers this outrageous idea of Idun's to let his big girl locate that Hans Westergaard fool.

His wife had subliminally been whispering the notion that Elsa should go run after this undeserving boy in his ear all last night. But the thoughts were still unpalatable for the protective father to process, as Agdar adds his fatherly spin to the emotional fray…

 _So, my Elsa **may** require an attempt to find this Danish Prince again to achieve closure…So, when she finds him, the inexplicable boy could forthrightly explain why he had rejected her, and my Snow Angel could move on with her life._

 _And when she's gotten him out of her system, then it will be just us again as a family, no further young men need apply. She'll forget all about this untrustworthy heartbreaker of a Dane…_

* * *

 _Nökken_ -Scandinavian mythological water creature that is said to devour human beings who enter the waters

 _Haeran_ – Danish Royal Army

 _Min alskare_ – my love in Swedish

* * *

 _Den Kongelige Norske Sankt Olavs Orden_ – Norwegian for The Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf is the most prestigious award for Norwegian Navy officers for meritorious contributions, in 5 descending orders of distinction.

 _Storkors_ – The Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf's Grand Cross highest award, given by royalty to Naval recipients who are exceptionally worthy for heroic deeds or ingenious invention, is an 8-pointed silver star with faceted rays, bearing the obverse of the badge of the Order. In very exceptional circumstances the Order may awarded 'with diamonds', in which case a ring of diamonds replaces the white-blue-white enamel ring surrounding the central disc on the front of the badge. A designated collar is also awarded as a separate distinction of the Grand Cross to those of special merit and bravery. The collar of the Order is in gold, with five enamelled and crowned coat-of-arms of Norway, and 10 gold crossbottony featured in the coat of arms of the Church of Norway. In heraldry, a cross bottony is a symbol having each arm terminating in three rounded lobes, forming a sort of trefoil. From the religious point of view, the cross bottony can be used as a symbol of the Christian Trinity.

 _"Ret og Sandhed' –_ Norwegian motto of the Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf meaning _'_ Justice and Truth'

* * *

Hello, Frozen friends!

How did you like that chapter? Some quality family time for Elsa and her parents at long last! Queen Idun is quite masterful at wrapping her King around her little finger, isn't she? Elsa should take lesson, because she may be needing a few pointers in haughty/ self-righteous man management of her own sooner or later...

I hear from several of my Guest-samas their anxieties for our Helsa. Worry not friends! Elsa (& Marshmallow) are travelling southwards; and Hans (& Eugene) are on their way northwards on this section of Scandinavian map... So perhaps their destined-for-one-another paths may cross again somewhere in between, very soon...

Southern Isles, here we come...

Stay tuned for some romantic fireworks and ice flurries colliding in the near future!

God Bless!

HarukaKou

The newest chapter's on its way, Frozen friends! Thanks for your patience and understanding! ^_^


	7. Chapter 7 - En Garde

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 7**

 **"En Garde"**

 ** _Somewhere between_** **** ** _Corona_** ** _'s_** **** ** _Dancing_** **_Forest_** **** ** _and the Southern Isles of_** **** ** _Odense_** ** _,_** **** ** _Denmark_** ** _…_**

After Flynn, and Job, had silently flown on nothing but trust of his gut instinct behind the youngest member of their 'Three Musketeers' trio for several aerial miles in the dark of night fall, Eugene pipes up when Hans leads the party down to land.

"I don't mean to pry, Kid. But do those of us here in the peanut gallery get any vital clues as to the five W's yet?" Never one to keep his own counsel for long, Eugene whispers loudly over the clatter of the three men and their three horses traversing through the brush of some foreign land beyond the sea.

" _Who_ is it were looking for? _What_ are they after? _Where_ did they go? _When_ will we catch up? And _why_ the hell am I whispering?" Flynn Rider's loudly whispering voice poses the pointed questions to his younger brother. Hans, once alighted from his white mare, Snaedis, had been silently making his way through the wooded coppice they had landed in as if he owned the place.

"Shh, Storbror." Hans' gentle, lyrical voice chides his older sibling for causing a disturbance to the otherwise silent thicket where the trio had landed. This sheltered, tree covered area was just behind the wharf of a nearby ship's dock where they had been staking out some very suspicious characters for the last several kilometers of travel upstream.

"Hey, don't you shush me! I'm the older brother here, Handsome! Oof! Watch out, fuzzball!"

Careless and a bit aggravated, Eugene had accidentally stepped on the tail of a rummaging-through-a-pile-of-leaves Eurasian red squirrel. The cute scatter-hoarder with a mouthful of nuts had subsequently spirited up a close by tree. In its hurry, the clumsy squirrel had knocked down a thankfully empty bird's nest right onto Eugene's unlucky head. Soon, noisy birds were encircling around his crow's nest, all squawking in disdain at their habitat's upset and the criminal behind it.

"Fine, fine. Shh!" Rolling his eyes as he plucks sticks and dried weeds among bird feathers from his coiffed sepia brown hairdo, Flynn says in frustration at this totally avoidable situation by chastening the angry twittering birds flying around his dizzy head. "For some reason, animals just don't like me." The roguish thief sighs when that tender-tailed furry red squirrel vindictively tosses a cracked open nutshell to bounce hard off Flynn Rider's unsuspecting head.

"Oww." The thief rubs his noggin with a sour-puss grimace up at the perniciously chortling tree-bound rodentia and its fiendishly feathered friends.

Job stifles a chuckle. But his big smile full of bright white teeth against the dark of night disturbs Eugene's delicate insomniatic sensibilities.

"You think I'm a joke, Pal? Well, I don't find this situation very funn—Hey!" Especially combative with a grumbling, unfed tummy and lack of sufficient sleep, Eugene's flippant tongue is halted when Hans' slender hand slaps over his big brother's loud mouth to instantly quiet him. Eugene's vexed eyes widen to peer over the hedge of tall bushes as he follows Hans' gaze.

There he glimpses to where Big Nose's awkward body form was being shoved and prodded by several large men in dark hooded capes onto a sea vessel the villains were transferring him into.

"Could it be you?" Speaking more to himself in awed retrospect than anyone in hearing range, Hans falls to his knees in the darkness to crawl between the brush to get a better vantage point. He squints through the dusky night to catch sight of a curious figure moving surreptitiously in the falling night shadows, orchestrating this all from the mouth of the ship he was standing in. When the head man departs back into the ship's ebony interior, Hans mechanically rises to his feet as the steam clipper roars its engines to life.

"Right! I guess that's our cue. Good job getting us here, Kid! Let's get Big Nose out of there before that ship takes off! Job, you take the two big bruisers on the left, and I'll take down the ugly cretins on the right. Sideburns, we'll block the gangplank and stall them until you alert the Port Master Authority over there in that boathouse to arrest the kidnappers. With the element of surprise on our side, this should be a piece of cake." Eugene's quick, imaginative mind already formulates a winning game plan for their success.

"Piece of cake. Unless dose guys be armed. Which dey be, T'ief." With his deep bass Job makes the deliberate statement in his unruffled, no-nonsense terms. He points a dark finger at the obvious long barrel rifles bulging at each caped captor's side after Eugene finishes communicating his daring rescue of the mislaid pub thug.

"Do you have to go and rain on my parade, Big Guy? Okay, they're loaded to the teeth. New plan required. Suggestions, Vice Admiral? Any ingenious tactics to get us in-like-Flynn this time, Sideburns? Get it? 'In-like-' oh, neverrmind." At his pun's ill reception, Eugene looks down and is flabbergasted yet again by his kid brother. Or lack thereof.

For Hans appeared to have gone MIA.

"Oh, hell! You have got to be kidding me! Weren't _you_ the one trying to teach _me_ about the merciful bounty of teamwork, Lillebror?!" Flynn whines in a discordant whisper with a dropped jaw to watch Hans' missing slender form slink like a sly fox through the night shadows along the ledge at the dock, until the Danish Prince audaciously slips in between the quartet of guards and the lowered hatch door.

Giving a startled Big Nose a conspiring nod from where he was hanging like a bat beneath the gangplank, the agile, daring Dane silently flips his long athletic legs up top. Hans disappears into the docked ship's open hatch right behind the four large, armed guards corralling the pub thug into the waiting sailing vessel into slips into the shadows, without a single one of them the wiser.

And without missing a beat, its ominous hatch door closes behind them all tightly before those watching had a chance to say 'boo!'

"Come on, Job! We're in for it now! That crazy kid's gonna need some back up from his compadres in this reckless new escapade of his! Whether or not he wants us to tag along. All for one?" Eugene repeats the bolstering literary line that Hans had used on them before as he sticks out his peachy tan hand to Job's dark brown one.

"…And one for all." Finishing the phrase as both the loner men get into the team spirit for their little 'brother', Job exchanges a familiar handshake and a nod with Eugene as the stubbly Prussian quickly finishes untying the trio of horses from the tree line. Then the two men, in one unspoken accord, swiftly give their horses a running start backwards to fly straight up, unseen. High into the stratosphere they ride on the Snow Queen's flying mares, Flurru and Nysnaer, with Snaedis obediently following close behind, to save their gung-ho D'Artagnan from getting himself killed.

* * *

 ** _The Southern Isles, after sunset…_**

"KRISTOFF BJORGMAN!" Prince Anna of Arendelle had just about her fill of being pushed and pulled and held back from where she had been nearly smothered atop Sven by her loving hubby.

"Ergh! WHY did we run away?!" As red in the face as a blushing, stuffed lobster, angry Anna tumbles off her reindeer's back the moment Sven landed in the safety of the tall tree thicket of the Danish forest on the outskirts of the Southern Isle of Funen.

"Anna. Those weird guys were shooting arrows at us!" Kristoff tries to sanely justify his order of retreat to his snippy back sled-bench driver wife as she shakes her fists at him, fully on her guard in the dusky falling darkness.

"So?! We came to find if Hans is in there! Not tuck tail and run like a bunch of scared rabbits!" Gutsy Anna cries out in frustration, throwing her hands about her frazzled head as she flicks her double braids huffily out of her much animated, livid face.

"Come on! What did you want me to do?! We were under attack by those jerky brothers of Hans! I wasn't about to let you and Rapunzel be in harm's way." As they argue like an old married couple, levelheaded Kristoff was busy rubbing down Sven and then Svala after the reindeers' harrowing escape at arrow and rifle point. "Just calm down, Anna." His mellow voice adds on to settle down the girl hovering over him with her hands on her incensed hips.

"Okay. Okay, I'm calm. I'm calm." The feisty Princess physically must make an effort to take a deep breath and compose her high-strung ruffled senses, but Kristoff's smooth voice helped her down most of the way.

That, and punching the wad of blankets and pillows tightly wrapped on the back of Sven's cargo pack that they had traded with the sisters at the charity school earlier.

"You think those two were some of Hans' twelve brothers? I always imagined they would all be – _you know_ – as gorgeous as Hans. Wow, what a major letdown." Changing mode from angry to curious in a whistle of the wind, Anna makes a puckered lipped face at the vision memory of those undesirable, ugly pair of nasty twin young men as compared to the winsome, fair of face Hans Westergaard.

"Yeah, they must've been his brothers, with all that threatening talk of their father, the King, getting even with us. Not to mention all those bad vibes going around that would play into Hans' story of the Southern Isles kingdom not being the most hospitable of places to live in." The blond mountain man reasons with all the verbal evidence they had just witnessed from the childish pair of grown men. Way more mature than those guys a decade older than he, Kristoff goes about pouring water for Svala in a dish that Olaf was helpfully holding up for the female doe to reach as the responsible man brushes the reindeer down simultaneously.

"But what a kingdom! They had a real live moat and a drawbridge, like in storybooks! So cool! Did you see that pretty design of the gardens on the front lawn? And…and, all those fancy bushes cut into shapes of birdies and swirly ice cream cone thingys? Hans' family must be very artistic. I would _love_ to meet them all and make new friends, and go on a tour of the whole castle estate together. _Sigh._ Wouldn't that be nice _?_ " The silly, sighing snowman spazzes out in dreamy wonderment of the decoratively scenic wonderland that was Hans' birthplace, the kingdom of Egeskov.

"Artistic, eh? More like sadistic." Smirking to himself, Kristoff murmurs under his breath at the spoiled rich folk who, for all their money and wealth and power, couldn't buy some good manners. "Watch what you're doing, Olaf." Kristoff admonishes the impressed snowperson for his absurdities as Olaf absentmindedly spills some of their precious canteen water supply on the ground in his hazy, starry-eyed daydream. Fortunately, Pascal was there with his steady, multicolored clawed hands to straighten the lopsided bowl as not to spill the entire batch.

"So, how are we going to get into that fortress castle now, to even see if Hans is there? They know what we look like and won't be all that eager to let us even get close again! Ohhh!" An overdramatic palm over her whining eyes, Anna was pulling her hair out by now. She rather ungracefully plops to sprawl across the thicket glen's grass, tugging her braids every which way in her flustered state of confusion.

Kristoff merely smirks at Anna's adorable flare for the dramatics as he gently lifts forgotten Rapunzel down to the ground from her seat upon Svala for the al fresco picnic supper he employed eager Olaf and helpful Pascal to aid him in setting out for their little party.

"Maybe…" Cousin Rapunzel daintily kneels on the blanket Olaf had just methodically spread out with her neon green chameleon's assistance. The snowman had only lost his arms once or twice in a tug-of-war with the surprisingly strong lizard who knew all about long-tail leverage.

Not paying much attention to her dangled word, the pair of hungry, humming sidekicks busily help Kristoff in passing out the packed lunch that the nuns at the Fattigskole school had provided for their trip.

The Prussian Princess bites her lip as she gazes down at Anna's forlorn form writhing on the ground beside her.

"… Maybe I know how to get in." The words, all come out at once in a rush as the brown haired young maiden speaks quietly. Rapunzel steels herself to explain her ideas on how to set her intrepid notion into motion.

Nonchalant, Pascal offers his girl a cucumber sandwich half with a hopeful look in his big buggy eyes, but the bilious young mother-to-be passes yet again his attempt to get her to eat properly.

"You do!?" On the other hand, energetic, always ravenous Anna never turned down a meal as she energetically bobbed up from her prone, laid out position on the thicket ground at dizzying speed to grab hold of the rejected cucumber sandwich that Pascal politely was now holding up to Kristoff instead.

 ** _MUNCH! MUNCH! MUNCH!_**

The feisty Princess loudly crunches the crisp vegetable. Anna sinks her pearly white teeth into both the yummy sandwich and whatever intriguing proposal Rapunzel had for her excitable appetite.

"Ye-es…" The more indecisive Rapunzel answers timidly, fighting back her ill feeling of evening sickness to be a useful member of the search and rescue mission.

Anna immediately sits up and leans her elbows on her knees, propping up her cute chin. Her shining eyes blink up expectantly like a child waiting for a piece of candy, directly in front of her now self-conscious cousin.

"We'll have to go back to the convent so I can ask Mother Superior to beg audience of the King for me. As the visiting Royal Princess of Corona, they can't deny me safe and equitable entrance and pleasant treatment to a fellow member of royal society, less risk bad relations with my country." Rapunzel explains quietly.

"Once there, I can inquire diplomatically about Prince Hans and discover what they know of his whereabouts as discreetly as I can." The more tactful Princess explains proper protocol for visiting royalty to Anna, Kristoff and Olaf. "I believe those dreadful brothers on the roof didn't see my face, so no one will suspect and it should go just swimmingly." All three of her Norwegian friends stare back at her optimism with a mixture of excited, dubious, and enlightened looks on their faces.

"You're brilliant, 'Punzy! I love you!" Anna goes from dejected to elated in .05 seconds flat as she leans over to hug her so fast, she literally bowls over Rapunzel with a great big, tight glomp. Anna trips on a crumpled wrinkle in the blanket until she falls all over the pregnant young woman and knocks them both down flat to the ground.

"Anna! Sheesh! Don't suffocate your cousin!" Kristoff was laughing at his energized wife's haphazard antics that left her poor coughing cousin gasping for the air clumsy Anna just knocked out of her.

"Oops. Sorry." Anna says sheepishly as her strong Ice Harvester lifts the orangey caramel girl's lithe little body up from the picnic blanket where she had tripped on top of her poor, pregnant cousin.

"You okay, Rapunzel?" Knowing his Anna was sturdy as a thick stemmed summer sunflower where she was dangling woozily loose in his arms, Kristoff inquires of the more delicate pastel flower. Rapunzel nods as Olaf and Sven were already propping the Corona Princess up, no worse for wear.

As Kristoff goes to make sure - Eugene's absence left the blond mountainman answerable for his pregnant wife's care - a speechless Rapunzel waves him off with a weak smile. The already sick in the stomach girl would rather just lay there for a few moments more, collecting her thoughts.

After all their time together, Kristoff knew exactly that feeling of utter breathlessness that his overwhelmingly active, boisterous gal often left him in with her reckless behavior all too well.

"We'll go meet with the Sisters, as you suggest, in the morning, Rapunzel. You get some sleep now, so you'll be ready to face the day tomorrow." Kristoff says in his placid, gentle voice with a disarming smile at the young woman. He kindly leads Rapunzel with Olaf to the covered wagon he had rented in Odense and had laid out a sleeping bag in the back of the vehicle for her to stretch out.

With Sven and Svala on either side of the wooded clearing by the fire he started to scare off any wandering predators, and Pascal as an eagle-eyed look out, Kristoff was not worried while his responsible eyes scan the tranquil area perimeter.

Like second nature, the Snow Prince easily hefts a dazed Anna around to carry her to where he had already set up a sleeping bag on a soft bed of grass for them to share for the restful night.

"This is cozy, after a rough day." Princess Anna coos as she winds down from her uptight edginess to stretch out on the soft grassy knoll. She then nestles deep into Kristoff's comfortable arms, after he removed his shirt, to settle down in the sleeping bag beside her.

Kristoff maneuvers the snuggling girl around his body that she fit in so well to, until Anna was pressed close against his warm embrace. The loving girl instantly starts nuzzling against his bare chest under the romantic moonlight that was just beginning to peek through the dusk of early evening.

"We're good together, aren't we, Kristly?' Lulled to a slumbering calm at last, Anna murmurs, realizing and reveling in the fact that even after all the tense argumentative moments just minutes ago, both parties here loved one another so much they'd forgiven and forgotten any harsh words already.

The second-guessing quarrel was forgotten. But the man, lying closed-eyed in the tranquility of nature with his little woman wrapped securely in his arms, might still recall some other sentiments dredged up in the heated conversation…

"So… you still think Hans is ' _gorgeous_ ', eh?" Kristoff says out of nowhere in the quiet still of the evening, where only the birds and owls and insects chirping in unison were keeping time with the warm breezes of the wind peacefully blowing over them.

"Huh?" Anna was already half asleep under the cool calm of serene nature, mesmerized by the tender entrancing heartbeat she had been listening to belonging one of its most magnificent favored sons.

Sensing her quiet guy's desire to converse, and his amusing unease on the subject, Anna opens her blue-green eyes to gaze up at her hunky hubby.

"Well, you've got to admit, in all honesty, that Hans is a major improvement to those two homely brothers of his, Kristly." A smile playing on her mischievous lips, Anna says to Kristoff with bright laughing eyes and a truthful guileless smile up at him.

"Hmph." Kristoff simply shrugs, feigning off his hurt feelings. It was not his style to criticize another man's looks—no matter how hideous they may have been—but he's hit a little too close to home for Anna to be complementing her former fiancé so excessively unambiguous and candid, especially in the secure intimacy of _his_ arms.

"But I know a guy who's a lot better looking than even Prince Hans Westergaard." Anna says, tilting her head a bit coquettishly with fluttering eyelids at his newfound jealous cuteness.

"Oh, yeah? Anyone I know?" The young virile man smirks down at his little wife with the returned flirt as he possessively squeezes her buoyant, practically weightless body in his musclebound arms deeper into this chest's clinch hold.

"Yep. I'll introduce you to him, tonight. And he's way beyond simply gorgeous. He's beautiful. Let me show you the ways..." Needing this release, as well as his constant loving strength to get her through her anxieties, Anna flirtatiously teases her man. She pets away his green-eyed envy with enthusiastic fingertips that trace Kristoff's every abundant muscular line as she melts into the chocolate of his brown eyes.

The feisty Princess runs her fingers through each strand of his feathered mane of golden hair as she caresses his powerful pecs with her nuzzling nose that she was leaning her cheek against his rugged and rippling bare chest adoringly.

And in answer to her previous request, Kristoff delivers to Anna a massively well-received kiss. The Wind Whisperer then goes the distance to intone some breathtaking music in his young lover's ear. His unruly golden locks cascade across his ruggedly good-looking face as their glimmering eyes, for one another alone, meet in the falling dusk of night to share a sweet smile.

That special attention to detail made Kristoff Bjorgman even more _gorgeous_ to Anna Bernadotte than anyone she had ever seen before, or ever would see again.

And all thoughts of other men, handsome or otherwise, were long forgotten in the beauty of his pure velvety embrace…

* * *

 ** _On a moonless night on_** **** ** _Kiel_** **_Bay_** ** _…_**

Moving like a panther through the quickly falling dusk, Hans Westergaard carefully skulks through the steam clipper ship's pitch dark corridors. He was well-versed enough with most seabound vessels to be familiar with the English designed clipper's layout schematics.

But Hans was especially well acquainted with this particular swift-moving ocean vehicle.

For he had seen it before.

And though his main interest was to search for clues as to where Eugene's friend Big Nose was currently being held hostage on board, the clever Danish Prince's curiosity was piqued by the little eccentricities of this life that God set as punishment, or perhaps trials of contrition, before His sinners.

 _'Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed._ ' 1 Peter 4:12-13

After approximately an hour spent staking out the ship and avoiding the four or five muscled blackguards roaming the ship as they fulfilled their onboard duties in stoic silence, intelligent Hans studiously considers all of the evidential clues he had gleaned thus far. First, from Big Nose's new bride Hilde, and then through what information he had gathered upon boarding this disembarked ship.

A group of mysterious men dressed in black capes with symbols of a gold crown and anchor wrapped with a snake had taken Big Nose. They had been interested in Hilde's wedding ring, but were not common robber thieves enough to purloin it for its gold monetary value. Their leader, who had words with Big Nose that his young wife could not overhear, possessed a single gloved left hand with some kind of strange deformed nub at its ulnar side.

And this extreme steam clipper ship, with its concave hollow water line and tined out afterbody that consisted of a bow lengthened for speed, was a square rigged vessel so familiar to Hans, it was the icing on the cake.

Especially after the Southern Isles Prince had read the name of this swift steam clipper on his upper hull, confirming his suspicions.

The **_'Sjette Doight'_** _('Sixth Finger')_ was a mixture of Danish and French languages…

 _Could it be you?_

Shaking his confused head with all the extrapolated data he had collected affronting his mind that only wished to reject the conclusions screaming at him, sly-like-a-fox Prince Hans had covertly entered yet another vacant compartment cabin. The cabin veiled in darkness beneath the forecastle deck was the final one in his investigative search for the kidnapped newlywed and the reason why he had been abducted.

But not ten seconds after he had clandestinely snuck into this rear quarterdeck room between bulkheads and started rifling through its shelving drawers for clues, the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly hackle with a cold, clammy feeling.

As quietly surreptitious as possible, Hans removes an object and abruptly closes the drawer in one fluid motion. He then jerks his startled head around when he hears a ruckus down the connective corridor.

And it was drawing closer.

"I swear on my sainted Mother's grave that I don't have it, Mister! And that goes for Aged P, too! Tell your boss that we've never even seen the thing you're talking about! It's nothing to do with us, fellas! You have to let me go! I'm innocent, I tell ya! Innocent!" Big Nose's unmistakable Brooklyn-like accent suddenly rings across the hall up from the Sjette Doight's midsection hold that his captors were dragging him up from for a meeting with their master.

 _This is undoubtedly your handiwork, Master. Well in keeping with your callousness to fellow man and malice to the world at large. But I have only one question: why this poor man, who would be insignificant in your cruel eyes? What has he done to deserve your wrath?_

The chaos brings the reflective Hans' razor-sharp mind back to the immediate reality as he quickly glances around this spartanly furnished captain's cabin that seemed to be their destination, as the footsteps move in closer.

 _I need to conceal myself!_

His mind races as his agile body desperately scrambles around the pitch dark captain's compartment for some semblance of coverage to disguise himself from being detected when they arrived. Although, the underlying evidence of who this crime's head perpetrator was exactly was about to turn Hans' growing suspicion into cold reality in a flashback of spiteful unforgiving fate's design…

 ** _SHKKK…_**

 _There's someone else in this room, isn't there?_

But before a frozen-in-place, covert Hans had the opportunity to process the caught-in-the-act intuition spurred on by the recognizable sound of a sword slowly being unsheathed, a terrible raspy voice whispers venom in his shocked ear from somewhere close behind…

"You were the last one I expected to see here, you worthless, cursed wretch of a devil boy. What is that they say? Vengeance is a dish best served… ** _COLD_**!" In the dim dusky light reflected in the cabin porthole's glassy mirror he was facing, a horrified Hans was sure he glimpsed a shadowy spectre from his past momentarily before –

 ** _C-CLUNKK!_**

And the entire world phases out of time as strikingly gorgeous Prince Hans is struck by a back blow to his handsome red head by the large brass bell guard hilt of an epée sword.

Hans sinks to his knees as this furtive sneak assault from behind is punctuated by a rhythmic clapping, intermingled with a spate of inhuman cackles…

* * *

 ** _The Ladegården Stables._** **** ** _Egeskov_** **_Castle_** ** _, 1839…_**

 ** _…Twelve summers ago…_**

The sound of harsh laughter was a disturbing greeting to a young lad of thirteen who had tentatively walked into the Ladegården stable house's vast area that had been converted to a spacious gymnasium.

Even before his firstborn son Kaleb had been born, King Herbert of the Southern Isles had already started building this sprawling estate"s ornamental equestrian building for the many sons of the royal kingdom of Denmark to enjoy and train.

It was this King's world-dominating determination to have many, many sons to expand his kingdom and eventually spread the proud name of the Westergaard Danes across Europe in the globe beyond.

Under their strict father's ironfisted thumb, training a small army of boys to be draconian conquerors at an early age was his intention entirely. The desire to strive to be the best and finest and most belligerent to make them overpower others had been driven into each one of the boys' minds since their birth.

From haughty and arrogant crown Prince Kaleb, to callous indifferent Anders. Then, calculating intellectual Lars; as well as snobby narcissist Ivers. Next, aloof, money miser Mattias; to cold-blooded casanova Didrik. Down the line, there's ambitious deceiver Jurgen; outspoken hothead Peiter; reticent, manipulator Berte; menacing brute Franz; and finally the mischievous, nasty twin imps Rune and Ruddi.

Poor Queen Louise's nonstop string of expected pregnancies had become a yearly event for her ambitious King with the express object of bearing him proud sons. The gentle spirited woman had graced her controlling, autocratic husband with a virtual plethora of the male heirs he demanded.

An even dozen of fine, strong, strapping boys were born to vitalize the kingdom of Denmark as an unstoppable influx of ascendancy to the crown.

Unstoppable, that is, before the thirteenth last unlucky little lad was one too many for the repressed, browbeaten Scotswoman to survive.

The older nine young men all had a strong resemblance to their fine-looking father. In stature, facial features, height and strong build, the Danish King's genes were obviously dominant with his sepia brown hair, broad, straight shoulders on a robust build and chisel-cut, attractive male features.

And then there was Hans.

Since the day he was born, Prince Hans Westergaard had been small, thin of frame, and woefully effeminate. He didn't fit in at all with the studly vigorous, rawly robust and manly masculine mold of his father and his other twelve brothers conformed squarely into.

This smallest child of the house of Egeskov, some eight years younger than the closest aged twin terrors, was reminded since his birth that he killed their dear mother with the unforgivable crime of being born.

"Why do we have to bother training with the Squirrel, Master Rügen? He's just a skinny little twit after being mollycoddled by those saintly nuns and ladies of the Fattigskole all those years." The spoiled rotten ninth in line, twenty-three-year-old Prince named Berte had complained when Hans first stepped into their _private_ gymnasium, looking lost and self-conscious for being the only one wearing a prim vest jacket and frilly tie on the athlete's court.

"Why is he even back here?" Tall, beefy, second in line Anders, age thirty-two, had commented under his snide breath as he had just swatted a tennis ball viciously at his eighth in line younger brother Jurgen, knocking the twenty-five-year-old cursing boy down with an illegal maneuver.

"Just look at him. He still looks as fragile as a pansy flower." Twenty-six going on sixteen, sixth in line Didrik imagined he was a ladies man, and flattered himself with his flaunted sculpted abs he was showing off in his constant hobby of weightlifting.

Despite thirteen-year-old Hans having a sudden growth spurt in this last year, his twelve older brothers, who had gathered for their father's important sixtieth birthday celebration, were all taller—especially the gauche twins—who may not have been blessed with the comely countenance and athletic physique of their progenitor, but they certainly had his streak of cruelty.

"I'd rather not look at the strange awkward child. Just the sight of his awful red hair makes me feel rather ill." Forth in line, snobbish at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Ivers looks down his venerated Roman nose at this unwanted younger brother with vain pride.

"I wouldn't say that red hair is ' _awful'_ in front of Father, if I were you, Ivers. Remember, Mother had red hair just as vibrant." By no means a sentimentalist, and never intending to stand up for his kid brother, third-in-line, thirty-one-year-old logical Lars was one of the few brothers who actually remembered what their mother had been like before the years of bearing countless sons had worn her down. Merely overlooking the various sports happening around gymnasium with disinterest, the intellectual brother pushed up his glasses with the observation.

That's when the eldest son of this royal house, thirty-three-year-old Crown Prince Kaleb chimed in. "That's right. There was a time when he loved Mother's red hair. So I would keep my mouth shut, Ivers, on that little witticism, or Father might cut you out of his will." No love lost for Hans, the eldest child at the other end of spectrum, still felt a sense of duty to his long dead mother.

"Deservedly so." Fifth in line, twenty-seven-year-old Mattias' greedy eyes lit up with rigsdalar signs as the opportunity for one less competitor in this inheritance game they played for the King's monetary affections reared its envious head.

"Then we get more for the rest of us if he's edged out, right?!" The crude loudmouth of the bunch, twenty-five years of age Peiter, as eigth in line of succession, was mainly relying on royal status and his father's generous allowance where he was in the middle of the totem pole, and was unashamed to announce their petty and clawing, healthy _brotherly_ rivalry.

"Yep! Uh, I think…" The not so brainy, but certainly the biggest and brawniest of the bunch, twenty-two-year-old, tenth in line Franz concurred with his older brothers' devious plot, just as the hulky lummox always did.

"Let's edge Ivers _and_ the Squirrel out of our rightful inheritance!" Hidden behind large-bodied, athletic Franz, twenty-one-year-old red pock-faced Rune called out loud and purposefully enough for Hans to unmistakably hear their harsh and cruel proclamation.

"You said it, Rune! Especially that girly Squirrelly! Let's pretend he's invisible from now on, and maybe he'll go away." His shockingly yellow haired, too awkwardly lanky twin added with vigor to his twin's wicked scheming views from where the pair had been playing ping-pong together.

Poor Hans, standing quite alone and feeling out of place and unwelcome in his fencing breeches, felt so very left out as all twelve of his other brothers talked over, around and about him as if he didn't have the right to even exist here.

He shivered inwardly as they all gave him the evil eye when each had ignored his every attempt to join in with any of their friendly games. As a whole, they were spiteful, diffident or just downright plain mean to this littlest brother they had not seen for over ten years, whom they all disdained in varying degrees for stealing their mother and disrupting by never fitting into, their clawing up the ladder world.

And it was all about to hit the fans.

 ** _CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!_**

The cutting, staccato sound that called every one of the young men to attention at their Master's insistent call distinctly echoed throughout the high Ladegården roof gymnasium.

"As you all well know, today is your father, the King's, 60th birthday. To commemorate this most important occasion, I have arranged for a competition in our favorite field of fencing for you boys to display your augmented talents before your patriarch." Said in his clipped precise way of speaking, he flipped back the black cape with the crowned golden anchor wrapped in a serpentine cord, symbol of the Danish naval forces Søværnet embroidered upon it.

Their fencing master Count Humperdinck Rügen took several steps towards the group of twelve Royal Princes standing before him, with only straggler Hans excluded from his projected gaze.

"To celebrate the day, I have decided that you three boys, whom I have painstakingly trained over the years with my expertise in the fine French art of fencing technique and skill, have become masters enough in your own rights to even train amateurs yourselves. So, in duel competition today, you will display your skills before your father in actual combat with young Prince Hans."

Hans had frozen stock still, as every one of the brothers turned to look at him and the fear stricken look that crossed his panicked face in shock of the sudden startling announcement.

"Your father had asked, upon the child's arrival last week from the charity school he had been lodged in, that I look into his athletic physical ability and progress. So as not to disgrace this proud royal house before our Naval brethren when he is sent to the Royal Søværnets Officersskole Academy this upcoming semester. And so, consequently, with this contest, we will all see how the good sisters of the convent had trained our slender little lad in the fine art of the epée." The full bearded man with the dark brown wavy hair strokes at his beard's gray streaks with an amused, pleased-with-himself smile down at a terrified Hans.

The princes of the Southern Isles had had the same fencing instructor/sports trainer/ royal steward managing their kingdom's affairs for as long as any of them could remember. The middle-aged retainer sycophant/vassel toady had been King Herbert's faithful man of every season who had all the important credentials of a royal count from a neighboring kingdom where he had some distant relation ties the Danish King.

But for all his supercilious airs and well-trained graces, Count Rügen of Wurttenberg lacked even a touch of human kindness or polite civility. The dark-eyed, disdainful sadist actually seemed to enjoy watching other people's misery, ideating his own methods of mental torture to control this law of misbehaving, wicked young men to his cruel, yet manipulative subjugation. And that is how he had played the boys, one against the other, for decades, shaping them into the harsh, unsympathetic men they were today.

Just like their father had wanted.

"Now, be a good example of my training and show your father proud of your technique and proficiency, my young soldiers." Rügen stated for all to hear when stately King Herbert himself entered the boy's gymnasium of his Ladegården stables to watch this arranged 'friendly' duel competition between his children in the honored sport of Royal tradition and seats himself upon a waiting royal throne.

"Be sure to give the wretch a proper thrashing before your father's audience. And prove my excellence in training my boys how to be men, versus an inadequate group of rejected royal women, disguised as Sisters of the church who raised that slight and malnourished devil boy. Do not fail me, Franz, Berte, Jurgen. You are my finest students. I rely on you to demonstrate this worthless creature for who he is." Whispering in their ears so the King could not hear his pitiless remarks, the pedantic pedagogue even slid his own special manchette six-fingered hand guard glove, created of interwoven metal threads in the brocade cloth especially for the polydactyl deformed count.

Nonetheless, the six fingered glove fit onto the darkest black-brown short cropped haired Prince Franz's left hand to provide proper protection and symbolized Rügen's endorsement for his prized student, who was first to represent Count Rügen's dignity as a praiseworthy fencing master.

Prince Franz was the tallest and strongest and most broad shouldered of all the brothers Westergaard. He, more than any of his brothers, had proven, time and time again, to be the most complete athlete of the group, which was quite a feat to be said.

Practically all the male clan of Westergaard, as holding with their forceful patriarch's bold footsteps, had their passions in one form of sport or another. And Master Rügen was named by Denmark's King as overseer to nurture all of his son's violent tendencies soon after their birth.

Between hunting wild game here in Egeskov, or traveling to foreign lands for big-game hunting in Asia and Africa, in archery and firearms, swimming, fencing, wrestling, horse racing and every other boyish activity known to man, the Princes of Denmark were renowned throughout Europe for their boldness.

And the Ladegården stables of Egeskov were well known as a nonstop athletic meet where the young men assiduously trained.

With their distant relation jack-of-all-trades as coach, teacher and mentor under their aloof father's detached instruction, these maturing Danes had been trained to live up to the name of the conquerors their ancestors demanded.

"Do you understand the rules, competitors?" Rügen states more than asks, the brutal man secretly glad that the no-holds-barred _epée_ regulations of fencing had been chosen for this cocky, so prim and proper little Prince who didn't belong here at all.

And then maybe he would quickly learn the hard lessons of life outside of his pampered and cosseted convent mission school life.

"Yes, Master Rügen." Franz had smirked at the set rules of battle that he cavalierly was certain he would dominate as he sneered down at young teenager Hans from his six foot three height.

"Yes, Master Rügen." Hans repeated, his tenor voice, just coming into its own, cracking to a higher pitch soprano that makes the entire group of young men watching burst into ridiculing laughter.

That is, until their stoic father, the King, gave them all a foreboding look for utter silence in his presence.

"Then let this dueling competition commence, young men. As an added incentive, I offer the victor to claim my prized, specially honed double-edged Scottish basket-hilted broadsword in celebration of our honored King's glorious day." With a flourish in a stroked beard, Count Rügen bowed his head to the nation's ruler in his wheedling, obsequious penchant to his high-brow King.

"And coin toss and decided we will use the epée blade's rules of engagement, I declare the entire body as fair target aim." Master Rügen gave Hans, behind him a leering smirk then turning to award the King and the other princes in audience a well-bred smile in the next second. The fencing instructor then nods to his trio of young representatives, all armed with rapiers, with a shrewd look in his evil eye.

"Are you ready to be defeated, Squirrel? Because I'm not planning on going easy on you, just because you are a green-horn kid." The tough and hardened tenth-in-line Prince Franz flexed his ample muscles rippled beneath his rolled-up sleeve. He scoffed at the thirteen-year-old boy, who was just coming into his puberty's less than impressive abs and pecs in tight shirt chest torso display.

The young teen self-consciously knew he looked rather gangly in his fencing breeches and this form-fitting shirt. Hans wished he still was wearing his frilly fuchsia tie and proper white shirt and vest that he had been told to remove. The svelte and conscientious, elegant young man had groomed his looks to be pleasing for a certain young lady someday, and he prided himself on his well-designed and perfectly fitted waist jacket that sweet Sister Angelica and Sister Bernice back in the convent had painstakingly dressed the boy, just coming into his teens out of his adolescence for his return home to the castle after living with them for ten years.

Well, not exactly a return home, per say. Just a limited summer stop over, really, before the still unwelcome child would be shipped off to the Royal Søværnets Officersskole naval Academy to go into officer training, as every proper royal boy must.

But his demanding high-handed single parent had been convinced by his second son Lars' dispassionate argument to finally allow the youngest boy to visit his birth place. If only to arbitrate his progress before Hans was shipped off to the Academy for another six to eight years like so much untested flotsam and perhaps embarrass them all with his inadequacy of ignorance should they not intercede.

So, with the other ten of the rest of his older brothers, and a few of Kaleb, Lars and Anders' small boy children as audience, glaring down at him from their allocated seats in the bleachers of the huge indoor stadium of this converted wing of the massive stable complex, Hans was not intimidated.

More than a few of the loudmouth rascals were laughing and chortling at his pointedly more slight and effeminate build and paler complexion compared to bulky Franz's healthy tanned ruddy one, as they heckled Hans from his long legged graceful beginning stance.

However, Prince Hans, confident in his ability with any sword placed in his hand, didn't mind one bit.

But the moment his intimidating imperious father's eyes caught their attention, all of the young men's twitterings came to a grinding halt under King Herbert's tyrannical gaze. When it had finally alighted on his youngest son, whom the standoffish sixty-year-old monarch had given a forbidding remote stare, thirteen-year-old Hans felt his resolve begin to falter.

 _No. This is my one chance to prove myself to him that I am not a throwaway. I can belong to an important place like this, too._

Young Hans had bolstered up his failing confidence to look past twelve pairs of unwelcoming, unfriendly and unapproachable eyes and the King's grimace back at him with cool trepidation.

Hans closed his dreamy verdant green eyes to envision yet again, as he did in all his misbegotten youth, a pair of hopeful azure blue beautiful ice crystals. The shimmering eyes of the sweet angel young girl, whom he only met in his dreams beyond his illustrations, were always there to encourage him when he was feeling down.

And made him strive to be more than himself, and capture her heart someday.

"No. I am prepared to be victorious." Hans had surprised Franz and Master Rügen both with his quietly defiant and calm statement. The younger boy looked directly up into his big brother's doubting eyes with the crystal clear orbs of brash youth.

"And I am **not** planning on going easy on you, either, _Storbror_." Hans used the familiar term for a little brother to address his elder, supposedly with affection, for the first time.

Perhaps it was meant to throw the other off kilter a little. Or perhaps it was because the sisters of the convent had taught the lonely boy, starting at four-and-a-half-years-old when he was placed under their care, to show respect for others. And kindness in adversity, for it will come back to you.

"En garde!" Of course, none of the sisters, even young Sister Francis, who once had a dear brother she had practiced fencing with of her own, was adventurous enough to try to teach this little royal Prince some rudimentary techniques concerning the art of fencing.

Eager Hans had caught onto this sport of Kings right away by reading up on self training on the subject, until the twenty-nine-year-old nun couldn't keep up with the ingenious and clever, merely five-year-old boy, who was already deadly accurate with a weapon blade.

And now, with a sharpened rapier in hand, the slim teenager had a tight hold of his focused edge's razor-sharp cross-sections blade to make his first ' _Attaque au Fer'_. The bold expulsion of his opponent's foil cutting edge was impressive as the opening move.

 ** _CLANG! CLICK! CLASH! CLATTER!_**

King Herbert's eyes slit as he watched this discarded youngest boy's graceful execution of fencing skills in epée conversation with his elder brother, twelve years his senior. From appels to lunging, to coupé deception and deflected derobement, young Hans had shocked the others with his flowing mastery of the parry and feint, plus his clever croisé redoublement and evasive _in quartata_ technique with his forte and foible that had all of his audience's jaws dropped.

 _This one's deceptively clever as a fox…Hmmm…_

"Argh!" His ire up, Franz, who was, by far, the best rough-and-tumble athlete in sheer force fencer among the Westergaard brood, was shocked to have to fight so hard with this wishy-washy, girly-looking little youngest brother who had a flair for the gliding footwork, much akin to dancing, that set apart fencing as more of a theatrical art than any other sport. By the time lean and wiry Prince Hans was done with his revolving balestra of speed and tempo patinandos, Franz was too dizzy to continue any further riposte nor parry, and Hans easily landed the set match point.

"Ah, it appears you've surprisingly accomplished a great deal of book learning in the convent, young man, that Franz here was not expecting. Let this be a lesson to you all, that even the smallest of mice still have a bite that can give you distension." Instructor Rügen raises his scratchy voice in teaching mode to his group of stunned young men with the condescending remark directed at Hans.

"But let me assure you, my years of experience will not make the same mistake to underestimate a desperate foe, no matter how small and insignificant they pretend to be." After the othe two brothers made attempts to take on Hans – and failed – Master Rügen felt he must step in, if just to save face and be rid of the foul creature. But even he finds the redheaded child formidable in combat with his intelligent planning and fast footwork.

 _How could this…this…boyish upstart, not yet through his puberty stage, show up his brothers who are already at the expert level of fencing, trained personally by me? Who does he think he is, showing me up in front of the King!?_

His cold blood boiling, the Count pauses to stroke his graying dark beard with interest before he puts up his sword to point towards Hans.

"En garde!" The pejorative older man cries out with his first engagement salvo of sword glides and parries. The slender teen, who was still heavily breathing in his recovery from just taking down the three of his brethren who had all, in shocked turns, been eliminated from the tournament Hans was the reigning champ so far.

Staying out of harm's way from Master Rügen's vicious forward thrusts and insistence of forced attacks, the youngest Danish Prince established with gallant aplume his right-of-way. The natural at swordplay counter-parried his offensive action in response to Count Rügen's riposte phrase after phrase. The physical combat continued quite intensely for a long period of time that made quite an exciting match-off for the audience of the King and his family.

"When I defeat you – and mark my words – I will defeat you, young Prince-my victory prize will be to send that brainless pony of yours to the knackers for mucilage!" An expert in the art of manipulative mental cruelty. Rügen suddenly stop-thrusts with all his strength, in hopes that he had set the boy's sensitive emotions off with his nasty threat to Hans' childhood friend.

 ** _RUS-SH! CLAA-ANG!_**

With eyes widened at this cruel menace to his beloved Sitron, Hans was viciously sent flailing backwards, losing his momentum of battle and his balance, just as the plotting older man planned.

"GRRR!" As the staggered back boy on his knees doggedly refuses to let go of his epée, Hans tries to shake himself enough to rise to his feet.

Seeing red for being so shamed before the King with this young upstart, the angry fencing instructor who had ruthlessly bore down with his signature forward thrust that had clenched every tough battle with swordplay he ever encountered before. Master Rügen inflicts, with his special German longsword, a perfect 'Zornhau' –' _Wrathful Strike_ ' – that was about to deliver a diagonal right to left blow that would certainly take his opponent down – if not entirely behead the kneeling young Prince Hans in the process first…

 _Not but a single one of his family, nor anyone on earth for that matter, probably would care…_

 ** _CLANGGG!_**

But his quick mind and even quicker reacting time to danger had, at last minute, raised his sword to ward off this vicious lunged aggressor with a perfectly executed three-prong troupement of his epee hilt in defense. With an artful croisé that slides along his opponent's blade into a stealthy coupé. Hans' thin bladed rapier skillfully grazed, glissaded then derobe avoided Rügen's fierce strike.

But as his defensive blade is held over Hans' vulnerable neck in such an angled position against Hans' self-protective supination, Rügen's vindictive foil slides down Hans' sword with such venom and force, he overplays his hand. Literally.

Rügen's oddly jutting out extra post-axial digit attached to his big hand's ulnal side is sliced and shaven off so cleanly that no one had time to scream.

"RRRR-GGGHHH! My finger! You worthless, cursed, red devil boy!" Count Rügen's agonized screech was so bloodcurdling it could be heard echoing off the stable's high rafters. The middle-aged man curses Hans as his self-caused, sliced open bloody wrists spilled its red liquid relentlessly all over the Ladegården stable gymnasium floor. And the hacksaw stub of a deformed digit that had always been connected to the man of blood's hand since he was born with a congenital physical anomaly, splutters far across the floor.

As Rügen grips his wounded hand and arm with the blood that would not cease running all over his remaining fingers, his proud German fencing sword clatters to the ground Hans' feet.

"I – I – I'm sorry! " The teenaged boy stammers his apology as the bearded fencing instructor flies off the handle, swearing in cursing foul expletives ceaselessly as the fearful others rush around to staunch the blood spilling from his wound with first aid medical bandages to cover up his auxiliary pinkie finger that was now reduced to no more than a bloody nibbon nub on his now almost normal hand.

"Leave it to the Squirrel to chop off old Rügen's propitious sixth finger. Way to go, you unlucky number thirteen sap." Didrik had said rather callously, coming up from behind to watch Kaleb, Lars, and Anders scurry around to help the badly injured instructor. The three eldest boys were attempting to staunch his wound until the medics arrived to take the bleeding profusely man out of the gym towards the Castle.

"You and your curse have struck our kingdom again." Argumentative Mattias and Peiter, who rarely agreed on anything, concluded in condescending unison at the aghast young lad.

As for Hans, his face was pale where he was standing, dumbfounded, with his guilty sword helplessly in hand to fall at his culpable side.

"Hans! No son of mine ever apologizes for being the winner of a fierce competition. You are victorious in the skirmish, boy. Now stand up like a man and savor your victory." Just then, not at all concerned for his underling employee with over a quarter century of loyal service, with his own callous, cold personality, King Herbert, stands and purposefully strides over to award an astounded Hans with Count Rügen's specially made, cherished broadsword, as was the custom between warriors in this kingdom..

"But, his finger…" Feeling guilty as sin, Hans' quavering voice was actually trembling from the shock of dismembering another human being's precious body part, vital or not. The redhead boy was shaking before his father with wide scared eyes that were reluctant, if not repulsed to claim his opponent's price sword, winning the match by these ruthless means, however unintended.

"Collateral damage is never something to be ashamed of in war, boy. Quit acting disgraceful and soft as an undignified female. Whether it was your skill or luck that has won you this day, won it you have done. You have gloriously crushed and devastated your enemy. Hold your head up high, son. It is cold, calculating strategy to do whatever it takes, by any means that makes a great nation of conquerors. It is a good lesson to learn. Rügen will survive. Or not, blood-letting and the sword will decide his just fate in defeat." Handsome, heartless King Herbert haughtily readjusts the bejeweled crown on his regal head as he looks from the fallen loser of today's battle over to his curious, perplexed son with what could be called a degree of satisfaction in his eyes.

But the authoritative King's severe instinct as he declared Hans the victor of the fencing tournament, anticipated that even the tender boy would benefit from strict Navy training.

A surprised Hans looked up to his father with a small glimmer of hope in his innocent eyes when he had been called 'son' by his father for the very first time in his entire outcast life as this family's pariah. The teenager, though shaken inside by the recent debacle, wondered if he had done something good to please his stringent dictator of a father, at last.

On the wings of anticipation of a child needing love and approval, Hans Westergaard had hoped that he had impressed his lone parent enough to be worthy of being loved and finally belonging somewhere, as he had yearned for his entire existence.

"It is good we are shipping you off to our proud naval Academy to learn how to be a rough man of war, and not a supple weakling of peace. I am certain there you will cast down the soft and effeminate kindness those fool nuns taught you. Now, just on the cusp of manhood, you may receive some true lessons in real life. It is obvious you desperately require the drilled rigors of being seaworthy in my Søværnet to ever be counted as a valuable member of our conquering society." The Danish Royal monarch was not at all smiling as he curtly said what should be congratulatory parental input and sagacious fatherly advice for his child's bright future that he seemed to have little interest in, beyond propagating another soldier for his kingdom.

But just the sight of his youngest mealy-mouthed offspring looking up at him expectantly with voluminous, vulnerable eyes, seemed more like his mother Queen Louise with her vibrant red hair Herbert once passionately loved, than any other of their children, brought back terrible memories of the wife being stolen from him far too early at the cost of this concluding son's birth.

"Although, I doubt you will ever grow up from the disappointment you are." And with those final dismissive words that coldly spoke of the man's utter dispassion as he shook his head negatively, King Herbert had departed the gym, leaving Hans' fragile psyche to crash down to bitter reality again about his large red ears.

"So there! Fence with that, Twinkle Toes!" Ridiculing Rune's nasally voice was the first to taunt his little brother with a pair of clamped, capturing arms suddenly snagged around Hans' slumped shoulders.

"You think Father is upset with you, Squirrel? I can't quite put my finger on it! Ha ha ha!" His partner in crime, rude Ruddi snickers as the awkwardly tall boy produces from behind his guffawing back Count Rügen's extra pinkie finger in all its coagulated crimson blood and coiled tissue glory. He waves the dismembered digit so close to Hans' face, the boy has to cross his eyes to see the gory appendage centimeters right beneath his pointy nose.

"Ohh. I feel ill. Excuse me." Ever the polite gentleman, even when he had to hold his hand over his about to be expectorating mouth, thirteen-year-old Hans ferociously struggles out of Rune's laughing grasp. As the remaining boys, Jurgen, Berte, Ivers, Mattias, Peiter, Didrik and Franz join the twins' cackle at Hans' tender-hearted soft weakness, Hans and his queasy stomach cut through them to rebelliously have raced from this gymnasium end of the expansive stable to seek out his one and only true friend in the opposing end of the wing.

In a bevy of withheld tears, as he tosses the prized sword to the hay covered stall floor, Hans buries his face in Sitron's warm muzzle and pale golden fur coat as his whinnying, loving horse cuddles his boy's hidden tears into his warm neck's sanctuary.

A despondent, unloved Hans threw himself on Sitron's back as the sympathetic horse who was the only one always there for him, carried his best friend to a distant hill beyond Egeskov's pristinely glorious, yet detached and treacherous cold mazes of his poor boy's broken heart…

* * *

 _Rigsdalar -_ Denmark's currency equal to approximately $23.50 US dollars at the time

 _Snaedis_ \- Snow Goddess in Icelandic

 _Nysnaer_ – Ice Beauty in Icelandic

 _Flurru_ \- Snow Flurry in Icelandic

 _Royal Søværnets Officersskole_ – Royal Danish Naval Academy

* * *

Greetings, Frozen Friends! ^_^

Here's a glossary of the fencing terms used in this chapter's thrilling flashback skirmish, if you'd like to have further insight as to our talented and gorgeous :) Prince Hans and his endless abilities! ^-^

Hope you enjoyed this ride down memory's lane with our poor mistreated red-headed boy! Please review your thoughts of the Westergaard clan we're beginning to explore the machinations of, as we delve into discovering what made Hans into the on/off ruthless man he became.

And speaking of ruthless characters…did you all envision what the Southern Isles' gym coach/ instructor, Count Humperdinck Rügen looked like? As I was writing this cruel, stern fencing instructor's persona, I kept seeing the villainous lackey of Prince Humperdinck's, that bearded dark mustached, 'the Six-fingered man' Count Rügen from: ( _Da da da DA! Drumroll, please.)_

One of my favorite movies of all time, 'The Princess Bride'! I have adored that adventure tale of daring-do and heroes and legends all my life! And I bet a lot of you love it too! I thought it might be a informative to describe him so you could see who I had in mind, as a cool reference point. What a meanie to our poor teenager Hansy! Served the count right that Hans unintentionally cleaved off his extra ulnar finger :0.

But that rotten Rügen's still hanging around in the present day, it seems…(I love placing in a good villain for our dashing hero to contend with! And this one's a blast from Westergaard's past!)

Thanks for reading! Ooh! We've passed the 100,000 word mark for this 'Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love…" sequel story with this 11,000 word installment! Wow! But my Frozen juices are still rolling in imagination for now, so the writing creativity part of Helsa & Kristanna & Eupunzel & Agdun's story needs me first! Sorry SM, Yugi-oh, Gundam! I'll get back there sometime! *_* August Birthday for sure! I promise!

God bless you!

HarukaKou

* * *

 _Fencing glossary: (That our 13-year-old Hans executed with superb skill, beyond his age. ^_^)_

 _Appels -_ Stamping the front foot to the ground, to produce a sound to distract or startle the opponent. An appel is also sometimes called a 'half-Advance'. This action may also be used to halt a bout, often by stamping the trailing foot insistently.

 _Attaque au Fer -_ A fencing attack on the opponent's blade, e.g. beat, expulsion, or pressure.

 _Balestra_ \- A footwork preparation, consisting of a jump forwards. It is most often, but not always, immediately followed by a lunge. It is faster than a step forward, which helps change the flow of combat. _'Balestra'_ is the French term for sudden leap.

 _Coulé_ **-** Also _graze, glisé,_ or _glissade_. An attack or feint that slides along the opponent's blade. In performing a sliding action along the opponent's blade, it is generally the goal to establish leverage by moving forte against foible, or forte to rhythm and timing of moves.

 _Coupé_ **-** Another indirect attack or deception that passes around the opponent's tip. Following a feint, the blade is pulled up and over the opponent's parrying blade. In foil, this requires use of the fingers and wrist only, since moving the blade backwards at any time during this move invalidates the established right-of-way. Done in proper time, and with proper distance, with the point never being moved backwards, the cut-over retains right-of-way during its entire execution.

 _Croisé_ **-** An action in which one fencer forces the opponent's blade into the high or low line on the same side, by taking it with the guard and forte of his own blade.

 _Conversation_ \- The back-and-forth play of the blades in a fencing bout, composed of phrases ( _phrases d'armes_ ) punctuated by gaps of no blade action.

 _Counter-Parry_ \- A parry that moves in a circle to end up in the same position in which it started. A counter-parry usually traps an attack coming in a different line, but in the same high/low line.

 _Derobement_ \- An avoidance of an attempt to take the blade. A derobement is a reaction to the opponent's attempt to entrap, beat, press or take the blade, in a circular, lateral, vertical or diagonal motion.

 _Épée_ \- A fencing weapon with triangular cross-section blade and a large bell guard; a light dueling sword of similar design, popular in the mid-19th century

 _En garde_ \- French for "on guard"; spoken at outset to warn the participants to take a defensive position.

 _Foible_ **-** The top third of the blade. This section of the blade is weaker in terms of leverage, and is used for beats, presses, and other motions where speed is needed and leverage is not crucial.

 _Forte_ – The bottom third of the blade, so named for the strength in leverage that it provides. Fencers should always perform parries with the forte and never hit opponents with it.

 _Patinando **-**_ There are two types of patinandos, speed and tempo. They are advance lunges but with different tempos. The speed patinando is a fast step and a lunge, while the tempo patinando is a slow step (to get a slow response from one's opponent) and a fast lunge.

 _Right-of-Way_ \- The rules for awarding the point in the event of a double touch in foil or sabre. The concept involves being the first to establish a valid threat to an opponent's target area. _Extending_ is the usual means to establish this threat. Breaking the extended arm during an attack means relinquishing right-of-way. An opponent can take right-of-way by parrying the opponent's blade.

 _Riposte_ \- An attack made immediately after a parry of the opponent's attack. A riposte is an attack with right-of-way following a valid parry. A simple (or direct) riposte goes straight from the parry position to the target. A riposte may attack in any line and is considered its equivalent in a conversation.

 _Supination_ \- The position of the hand when the palm is facing up.

 _Target Area_ \- The area delimited for valid hits with a fencing weapon. Épée uses the entire body for target. Sabre uses all the body area above the waist, except the hands and the back of the head.

 _Zornhau_ \- Technique used in German Longsword (Kunst Des Fechtens), a diagonal blow from right to left, literal translation is " Wrathful Strike".


	8. Chapter 8 - I Can Go the Distance

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

 **"Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 70**

 **"I Can Go the Distance"**

 _The_ _North_ _Mountain_ _,_ _Norway_ _, two days ago…_

As Elsa meant to leave for her journey early the next morn, she bid her—one anxious, one excited—parents a kiss goodbye of fond farewell that previous night. King Agdar and Queen Idun had then instructed Kai, Gerda and the servants in the Ice Palace to load Elsa's travel baggage up with as much food and clothing and traveling provisions equal only to the amount of incessant advice, entreaties and precautions for her voyage from them.

So at last seen fit to be ready, early in the sun risen morn, Queen Elsa indeed saddled up.

Upon her faithful, eager steed, Sitron, she had assured her parents of her competence all the while, with a determined look of cool confidence on her lovely features she left her Ice Palace, with the giant snow monster her Papa had agreed to accompany his lone child as protector.

Now, as for Marshmallow, he was more than elated to be counted a useful protective snow monster for his Ice Mistress. Although, at the same time, the nearly thirty foot tall Snow Beast was experiencing a sense of fearful unease at leaving his Ice Palace – the one he had been born and raised and never imagine leaving for these past two years – for the first time in his life.

But Elsa's drive to strike out in a big wide world out there on her own to find a charming prince who had mysteriously vanished, did require a bodyguard. At least, according to her overprotective Papa, King Agdar.

And when it came to being the best Palace _'bouncer'_ this country – or any other - had ever seen, gargantuan Marshmallow was your snowman.

Or rather 'Snow Beast', as haughty Papa insisted Elsa's awesomely impressive creature of snow and ice must be introduced to the greater society at large.

 _'Yes, Papa. I promise to call him 'Snow Beast' when others are present.'_

At the recollection, Elsa smiles inwardly at how adorably silly her father could be, now that the shrouded veil of his authority of ice and closed mouth secrecy had been lifted to reveal that he was just like her all of his life as well.

 _All that time I thought I was alone with these powers… That it was my lonely curse… But you had to deal with them too, Papa, all through your childhood. How much worry and strife that I caused both you and Mama in my fear and uncertainty… I am so sorry…_

Elsa's, at times, frightened soul was mirrored in Marshmallow's hesitant eyes that were so droopy and sad to be waving farewell to Papa, Mama, Kai and Gerda. As well as a volley of snowgies that the Ice King had to cryokinetically hold back from spilling out from the Palace's massive double doors in chase of their Queen going on an adventure without them.

But along the snowy path down the mountainside, a sensitive Sitron turns his head and seemed to understand that the young woman astride him had to remember her resolve. So, with a high pitched whinny, Elsa is pulled out of her blue funk.

Glancing from Sitron's ebony eyes full of hope to her Mama's sweet song filled with blessed assurance that was serenading her finally independent child's progress, the Ice Queen takes a deep breath and smiles back at her two companions.

"It's about time I showed you the world, Marshmallow. Anna taught me that it can be a beautiful place, full of new rainbows to discover around every bend. Let's see if I can find my handsome Prince in trade for that pot of gold at the rainbow's end." Alluding to illusionary literary myths as she embarks out on this secret search and recovery mission all alone – beyond having loyal Sitron and dear Marshmallow as escorts - Elsa of Arendelle knew she always had a precious friend in Jesus to rely on. He would unfailingly be walking at her side, no matter where the long and winding road took her.

So she wasn't frightened to roam even further outside the castle gates on her own than she'd ever been before anymore.

Elsa, with renewed confidence in every hoofstep that Sitron crunches down the frozen North Mountain path, lifts her platinum head proudly to wave back a blown kiss' dazzling array of prismatic ice rainbows in Mama and Papa's direction, illuminated in the brilliant morning sunlight.

With Marshmallow racing down the hillside alongside Sitron's proudly galloping heels, Queen Elsa of Arendelle urges her two friends to ride her cool winds at incredible speeds, as she and Sitron had trained for the past year or so to do. Swirling wisps of ice curl through her iridescent platinum blonde braid of hair where snowflake flecks glisten in the radiant morn.

For now, to maintain her fragile as ice sanity as well as the purity of her heart, Elsa Bernadotte would not permit herself to believe that the valiant hero in her time of need, so many times – Prince Hans Westergaard – offered her a devotion that was only the deception of a fading dream.

She gallops on her steed without abandon down the snowy rolling mountainside, with the same glimmer of unwavering hope for tomorrow's happiness reflected in her brilliant blue sapphire eyes at the sunrise ahead. Elsa lifts her gaze with pertinacious purpose to go the distance, no matter how long the miles, and seek out the truth, if a man's sentiment of love for her was as real and strong as her dreams of him promised to be.

And as she races, the Queen of this arctic land was, at moments like this, was so 'one with the wind and sky' in her embraced freedom to realize her own dreams, that she hears her ice's limitless song echo in her ears:

 _I'll be there someday, I can go the distance!_ _  
 _I will find my way, if I can be strong_  
 _I know every mile would be worth my while_  
 _When I go the distance, I'll be right where I belong!__

 _Down an unknown road to embrace my fate_ _  
 _Though that road may wander, it will lead me to you_  
 _And a thousand years would be worth the wait_  
 _It might take a lifetime but somehow I'll see it through__

 _And I won't look back, I can go the distance_ _  
 _And I'll stay on track, no I won't accept defeat_  
 _It's an uphill slope, but I won't lose hope,_  
 _'til I go the distance and my journey is complete.__

 _Like a shooting star, I will go the distance_ _  
 _I will search the world, I will face its harms_  
 _I don't care how far, I can go the distance!_  
 _'Till I find my hero's welcome waiting in your arms__

* * *

She sets off with an optimistic upbeat that the wind blowing through the mountain murmurs in her soul. Comfortable now in her transmuted Ice Queen pale blue and slinky shimmering gown, Elsa had been riding on the ethers of pure love energy for the past two days. Over fjords, over mountains, over oceans, her ice flurries and focus created ice slides down the Skagerrak, Samsø **,** and Great and Small Belts that led southwards. The ice had carried the magical girl and her fearless horse Sitron, tractable to her magic cryogenic abilities, across the skies, frozen waterways and landscapes with Marshmallow bounding close behind on the uninhabited lands Elsa had well-plotted the trio through.

The Queen had pushed aside her anxieties and fears to bask in the warm streaming down sunbeams that so reminded her of her vibrant little sister.

 _I wonder how Anna's doing in Arendelle?_ _Elsa almost wished she had stopped in Arendelle when she passed by, to check up on her little sister and Kristoff where she left the couple in charge of her kingdom. But the wise ruler wanted to display more trust in such an instance. Especially since Anna and her newlywed husband did deserve some quality time alone in one another's company, before she, Papa, Mama, Kai, Gerda and many of the servants of Arendelle Castle, who had been employed to transfer to her Ice Palace to attend to the returned King and Queen, returned._

Currently, Arendelle was practically vacant so as to leave room for newlywed space that would not be so naturally delicious, were her parents present.

It was Elsa's decision after all, to get Anna and Kristoff involved in the previous adventure when the two of them should have been getting acquainted with one another in their blissful honeymoon time. So, that left big sister Elsa feeling more than a little guilty to interrupt them again now for her own, highly personal search mission.

If Elsa told Anna where she was heading, of course, Anna would want to come along. Then, Arendelle's leadership would again be in question and all for the simple task to pick up her Aunt Arianna from nearby Prussia, which Elsa could perform quite easily on her own.

Besides, Anna's forthright opinion of one Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, especially about giving him some national awards and commendations, let alone a knighthood, may not be so well received, and cause her elder sibling's resolve to waver, let alone Papa's, if Anna kicked up a stir.

And if the icy blonde bombshell of a royal monarch just happened to bump into a certain Kommander of her fleet in the company of his older brother Prince Eugene while in Corona, who both were under the expressed order from her Papa, the Admiral, to return to Arendelle Castle to accept their due honors, then so be it.

As Elsa daydreamed of such a fortuitous encounter, Marshmallow, had joined his Queen in taking a break after the long, straightforward ice slide path across the calm Kattegat Bay and Straits in the North Sea that they'd traversed without incident. The hefty frosty creature carefully plunks his large snow mound behind to sit daintily down beside his Queen's easily formed ice throne, on one a few sizes too small that she'd hastily whipped up for her big friend.

In an obscured area beneath a thicket of trees nearby a glimmering lakefront, Elsa created for herself a fancy, icy changing screen as well as a vanity seat. The tall blonde had just finished putting on this new day's travel wear of a pale blue summery, yet strikingly elegant, high collared gown under the early morning first rays of sunlight, and had taken a stroll to stretch her legs by the lovely waterside.

Gazing at her reflection in the still lake waters, in a strange way, Elsa of Arendelle had never felt so buoyant. Now that Papa and Mama were alive again, to be the rulers of Arendelle, it was like a huge stone weight had been lifted from her young shoulders.

Elsa felt so very free to be who she was and do what she wanted, as an independent young woman just starting out in life—without too many burdens and responsibilities that serving her country as sole royal monarch demanded. A role which Queen Elsa had uncomplainingly been content to fulfill for these past two years, with pride in her country and fellow countrymen, instead of enjoying just being a young girl with the ability to strike out on her own.

Now she had that opportunity, for the first time in a long time, where she had the freedom to chase her dreams, rather than her fears stalking her.

Acquiring her fancy dress trunk from Marshmallow's hidden compartment, Elsa had been, as a way of relaxing, rummaging through her pretty dresses. She was deciding which stately frock she should don when they arrived in the kingdom of Corona.

 _The purple or the Aqua blue? The jacket or the shawl?_

The platinum blonde's dizzy mind was trying to keep off anxieties and on the straight and narrow track of gaining audience with her royal Aunt and Uncle in Prussia. She would not merely dress herself mindful of when she'd be reuniting with, perhaps, that dashing redheaded Prince with a pair of mesmerizing viridescent green eyes…No, of course not. That was the furthest thing from her mind.

"Would you like a fluffy powdered sugar snow Vaffler for lunch, Marshmallow?" Elsa, attempting to shake that daydream from her head, in quite a warm, caring way, kindly offers her Snow creation's favorite treat of powdered sugar frosted, loosely packed snow that the culinary artist of an Ice Queen would make into a giant hula hoop sized, heart-shaped waffle that was a Norwegian tradition for her frigid friend to partake in a meal, too.

"Mmnm! Mmnmm! Mmmm!" Exhausted from running behind Elsa's strident ice path across the Skagerrak Straits into Kattegat Bay, Marshmallow grunts approvingly enthusiastic for the tasty soft snow waffle that made his wobbly ice buck teeth excitedly part. A drool icicle hangs from his mouth, in anticipation of the treat for his near starvation level hunger.

"All right! One extra large and melt in your mouth soft snow Vaffler with extra powdered sugar sprinkles on top, coming right up!" Elsa didn't exactly know why, but every step she took on this new soil made her feel lightheaded and giddy as she magically whips up the sweetened confection out of the thin air and a large sack of white sugar.

 _"_ I wonder where I am? I know I've never been here before… But it does feel rather… familiar…" The young Queen suppositions aloud as Elsa goes to feed and groom Sitron where the stallion fjord horse was breathlessly stretching his legs to wander.

Marshmallow's somewhat suspect large form was a a subject she'd rather keep under wraps as they travel through this foreign sovereign kingdom in an unauthorized stopover breather for the trio of adventurers, after their ice path Southwest down the Skagerrak Strait and into the winding Kattegat Bay brought them into Denmark.

"Where have you gotten to, you silly boy?" With a little chuckle at the horse, Elsa turns from gathering some of the horse feed from Marshmallow's hidden satchels to find Sitron not where he was resting just seconds ago.

"Oh!" Elsa's high-pitched voice comes out in a squeak at her surprise. "When did you three little hitchhikers sneak in here?" Elsa is taken aback midstep, when she opens the tightly sealed knapsack. It had been cleverly secured inside one of the many compartments that ingenious Ice King Agdar had cryo-fused to the Snow Beast's body to function as storage pockets for his daughter's weeklong travel provisions. He had arranged this so that Elsa would need to stop to interact with others as little as possible, namely the despised royal house of the Danes, whom she may be passing by.

The huge Snow Goliath was now in and of himself a convenient one-stop supply shop along his bulging snowy chest, stomach and back.

 ** _POP! POP! PLOPP!_**

A trio of giggling snowgies pop out in succession from the unsealed rucksack, each of them covered in the powdered sugar that was meant to be contained within the bag.

In a hazy puff of powdered sugar smoke, a surprised, staggered back on her high heels Elsa cannot stifle a sneeze –

 ** _"AAA-CCCHHOOO! AA-CCHHOOOO!"_** The normally elegant and quiet and demure, prim Queen Elsa loudly lets out a duo of noisy sneezes. And as consequence, several more unruly, chattering snowgies add to the empty field's chaos.

"No, no no no! You all have to behave for me!" Tripping on her own high heels that sink into the soft dirt of the meadow, splashing mud on her dress as she tries to give chase and corral the multiplied snowgies, Elsa rushes around the campsite. Perplexed, the ice wielder uses her verglas magic finally to grapple back all the mischievous doings of the troublesome little pests that had increased into a rebellious seven snowgies gang now.

All the little mischief-makers had decided to mess around with Elsa's traveling chest full of gorgeous, artistically styled clothes that the Arendelle Queen had been perusing earlier.

By the time the septet of tiny mischief makers had finished their rascal run, nearly all but a chamois or two underthings had been paraded and dragged through the grass stained mud. Along with Sitron's grain supply, that lay scattered across the thicket ground in front of the lake for the riled up hungry birds to suddenly swoop down from the tree-line to gobble up.

"Wait! No! My clothes! Stop! Please! Ooh!" Beside herself at this unexpected, messy upset to her neatly moving along plans, a grimacing Elsa stomps her indignant foot to the ground, which succeeds only in kicking up a little more muddy dirt onto the helm of her skirt.

The Ice Queen stands, devastated over where her best dresses and lacy white petticoats were now all destroyed and disheveled across the dirt streaked forest ground.

"Now what will I wear?" In a small, despondent voice, poor distraught Elsa sinks to her knees as she stoops to pick up her favorite purple skirt and jacket ensemble, it's pale blue silken shirt splattered with dirt, that her quick attempt to rub off seemed only to worsen its spreading.

"I can't visit court audience of any King in dirt stained clothing! Whatever will they think of Norway for being so disrespectful in their royal presence?!" In her mind, Elsa imagines herself standing before the King and Queen of Corona in a muddy mess that the court spectators would burst out laughing at their visiting Norwegian dignitary.

"You bad, bad, **bad** snowgies!" Her artistically distressed feminine temper flares as Elsa berates the guiltlessly unaffected, wobbling and bouncing about as if nothing occurred, miscreants.

But after all of the snowgies pause to blink back in unison up at her, unimpressed, the seven dwarfish snowgies simultaneously send a disrespectful razzle up at their downcast Queen and creator.

 **"RRRZZZZZ!"** _Chuckle chuckle chuckle chuckle chuckle chuckle chuckle_.

"Hnmmm?" A quite empathic Marshmallow looks over to where a disturbed Elsa was wringing her splattered favorite dress in her hands, speechless, as a cool tear rolls down her sniffling cheek.

"I thought I could handle this journey on my own… But I guess I was wrong… I'm not good enough to be so independent…" The easily doubtful Ice Queen murmurs to herself, her pure heart utterly downcast by the bleak situation.

 **"RRRR-OOAA-RRRR!"** Marshmallow, who had been on the sidelines, sitting by the scenic lake and contently chewing on what little that the marauding snowgies left of his powdered waffle, lets off a mighty deafening roar in defense of his needy, weeping Queen. His icy blue spikes shoot up from his angry back and arms and kneecaps as well extend into sharp ice slivers. Marshmallow's teeth grow into jagged, razor-sharp fangs and the huge snow beast transforms into a terrifying sight that the snowgies previously had never yet seen of their biggest pushover 'brother'.

 ** _PLUNK! PLUNKK! PLUNKK! PLUNKK! PLUNKKK! PLUNKKK! PLUNKKKK!_**

One by one, all seven of the dress decimating, tree climbing, horse tail swaying snowgie rascals freeze in place and fall backwards in a dead faint of unadulterated, overwhelmed fear.

"Hee hee hee hee. Thank you, Marshmallow. You are gentleman to defend a lady in her moments of distress." Blushing Elsa comes out of her depths of despair with a triumphant smile upwards. Her gargantuan snowman empathetically tries to console her by scooping up the naughty seven snowgies in one felled swoop and shoving them roughly into the tight compartment on his tightly packed snow tummy.

Slowly turning back to his normal self, the Snow Beast then peeks into Elsa's wide open trunk to hook on the only piece of clothing left inside. He daintily lifts in his icy clawed fingers Elsa's pale blue set négligée, with a sympathetic moan on his big plaintive mug.

Elsa titters as she accepts the only unscathed article of clothing back, however embarrassing it may have been, from the huge snow monster who toothily grins down at his red-faced Queen.

Gently folding the delicate silk négligée of pale blue's very modern, somewhat immodest style that she recently purchased and had not yet had the audacity to wear, Elsa stands, with a gentlemanly Marshmallow's unrequested assistance.

She places the palest icy blue silk nightgown down in her personal travel bag, and walks over to where Sitron was prancing and whinnying to gain her attention.

The horse was focused on a four-way wooden signpost with as many markers denoting kilometers and directions to the East-West-North-South to various locations.

"What is it, Prince Hanssome?" The lissome blonde young ruler reverts to her original affectionate nickname for the golden coated fjord horse who had been left in Arendelle stables' care when his owner was shipped back home to face punishment.

 _Home…_

Elsa's blue eyes scan the rolling hills and green Meadows beyond the different directions until they widen when she catches sight of one particular sign demarcation were Sitron has been whinnying and snorting to coax his lady mistress to see.

There, glimmering in the midday sun the signpost marker to town's name that red in the Scandinavian world marker – 'Odense, Kvaerndrup' – 29 km.

 _Kvaerndrup?_

Elsa's geography knowledge of what this location's name signified causes the Ice Queen to feel a chill run up her spine.

"Egeskov Castle is in the village of Kvaerndrup! We're in the Southern Isles, Sitron! It's your home, right?" Elsa whispers in the stallion's pricked-up ear in awestruck tones that she, by chance, or by some sentimental instinct, had been drawn precisely here.

A scowling Sitron didn't seem all that enthused by the idea of returning to Egeskov, even though he was just as anxious as Elsa to find his missing master that he had not seen for over two years now.

"Is it possible that Prince Hans brought Cousin Eugene back here to meet his father and brothers? Egeskov is closer than Corona…" Considering the logistics, Elsa's curious mind whirs the sudden hopeful idea, however improbable the theory may be, with Hans' current relationship with his estranged family that Elsa had gleaned about in their time together.

 _Our time together… Are you out there, my Prince?_ Elsa muses silently to herself as her eyes scan the castle just peeking over the horizon.

Without putting much thought into it, she saddles up on Sitron's back. Both the unsure Queen and her uncertain horse begin to ride in the direction chalked down for the twenty or so kilometers between here and Egeskov Castle's unwelcome unknown…

"You lie low and stay out of sight when we get there, Marshmallow. I'll try to take us along some rural inland roads. So, do your best to melt into the shadows, and keep cover in the treeline, Big Guy." Elsa calls up to her faithful Snow Guardian, who immediately was in motion to run by her and Sitron's trotting side.

The large bodied Snow Beast doesn't quite comprehend his Queen's metaphor as he gazes down forlornly at his monstrous hands and matching bulky feet. He tries to imagine himself melting into a more compact figure, but Marshmallow was perpetually refrozen due to the powerful personal snow flurry cloud that Elsa had, previously to this trip, already formed continually over Marshmallow's confused head.

"Mmnmmn." The huge snowman laments his inability to fit in the box with his Ice Mistress' wishes as he hunkers down and hunches over as best he could to appear smaller as he creeps on all fours beside the horse and rider.

"Faster, Sitron! Your Master may be there as we speak! It is Hans' home, so it would be perfectly natural for him to return there, right?" Elsa tries to validate her enthusiasm to visit Egeskov Castle with her excuses.

"After all, Papa ordered that we bring our heroes back to Arendelle to receive their honors. And while were passing so close by, it would be derelict of us not to at least ask about one of their royal son's whereabouts." Justifying her hasty decision and rash action of storming another kingdom, unannounced, with the excuse of seeking out the youngest Southern Isles' disgraced Prince to bestow his heroics with an award, Elsa excitedly presses her willing stallion forward to race towards the kingdom of his birth—and that of Hans Westergaard, too, as the fjord horse dashes across Funen's - Fyn's - scenic Garden Island of gently rolling hills, orchards, hedgerows and thatched-roof farmhouses.

 _Where are you, my Hans? I'll find you someday, just wait for me._

 _…And then I will bring you to my home…_

* * *

 _… Snowflake?… Are you hugging me?..._

He awakes from the warm embrace of his fantasy girl's chilly arms slowly to realize that it was a thick hemp rope tied around his constricted lower torso rather than something more pleasant. By the time, Prince Hans had fully awakened from the mind numbing crush of his bashed head, the compact English clipper's double steam engines were already well underway.

The experienced young seaman had enough shipboard familiarity to realize that the diagonally rolling motion of the craft meant it was taking a northeasterly direction at quite a clipped rate. His addled senses also told Hans that he had been rearranged in his unconsciousness, to be put down into some lower-level of the ship. Judging from the dark clammy stench of the place, it was the bilges he was thrown face down against the cold, dirty floor thereof.

"You okay?"

And he wasn't alone here, either. A voice comes out of the shadows of Hans' readjusting vision.

"Big Nose?" Blinking, Hans shakes himself, unable to move in any one direction for chains and ropes and shackles on his feet. His head was pounding as he comes wider awake, enough to squint his eyes against the ebony interior of the ship's barricaded hold he was in the captivity of.

Sitting not too far across from the Danish Prince was that pub thug friend of his brother Eugene's, who went by the inimitable nom de plume of 'Big Nose'.

Hans had been at the man's wedding just yesterday, although Big Nose was no longer looking as spiffy and pristine as he was in his white ceremonial kittel robe and full dressy white suit at the marriage.

No, his snowy white kittel had been ripped and shredded, and his white suit had been deeply stained with streaks of blood and dirt. Big Nose had a pair of double black shiners, a dislocated jaw and an obviously broken bulbous nose, that was even redder and bigger for being swollen.

"What happened? Why did they do this to you?" Immediately alert in his compassion, Hans attempts to rise to his feet and attend to his new friend. But the thick corded bonds around his hands tied behind his back, the rope tight around his waist, and the secured chains shackled around both of his ankles didn't leave Kommander Westergaard much room for maneuverability.

"Ugh, szzt." Hans first groans at his aching twisted tendon senses as he tries to escape his tightly knotted thick chain and bonds, compounded with the pounding pain streaming down from his dark red blood encrusted wounded head.

"It's a long story." The swollen eyed Big Nose answers in his droll accent with a depressed sigh.

Hans, seeing that these ropes around his wrists, the thick hemp chained around his waist, and iron shackles at his ankles were too strong for his present strength to wrestle with. So he plunks back down to sit on the floor, several restricted paces across from the former crook.

Obviously, someone was aware of Hans' agile capabilities and didn't want the natural born escape artist to be able to flee for an extended period of time.

"It appears we are going to have some time together before I can work off these impediments. So please do begin elucidating, my friend, and we can start formulating our next plan of engagement." Hans' Naval trained officer's quick, agile mind was already planning strategy as his similarly quick agile hands were attempting to flex away from the roped capture.

Big Nose's black eyes widen, impressed at how the young Prince quite limberly stretches his thin frame to be bent over enough to reach the metal clasp at the end of the chain holding him back. Once reached, Hans carefully starts to shave at the thick hemp cord around his wrists at his back on the jagged edge of the rusty chain shackle.

After all, a shackle was primarily a tool used in nautical boat rigging systems, to attach line ropes to hoist ladders and sails, as well as run the rigging and quickly 'sweat the halyard' that young seaman Westergaard had learned well in his term of naval service.

"Well…" Big Nose glances over at Hans up from the corner of his eye a bit sheepishly. "After the wedding ceremony and the Snuggly Duckling guys sent us off, when Hilde and I were just coming to shore after our floating honeymoon gondola ride, those brutes hijacked us. Wait – it was my Hilde who tipped you guys off about me, right? She's okay back at the Snuggly Duckling, eh?" Big Nose then pauses in his introductory tale to inquire about his gutsy lady love, whom, in order to let her go free, he had pledged to come away with these dark villains.

"Yes. Please rest assured that your wife is safe. I left her with your good friends at the Snuggly Duckling and sent them hurriedly to inform the Palace guards in Corona about your kidnapping by unknown marauders." Hans deliberately leaves out his own suspicions as to naming Count Rügen in this grievous criminal matter. He wished for Big Nose to be the one to identify and explain his attacker without complication to the fact that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles already was well acquainted with the perpetrator.

Big Nose may not trust the Danish Prince's motives to help him any longer, should he discover Hans' national origin and the fact that he hailed from the same location as the evildoer who had waylaid the newlyweds.

Trust, after all, was something Hans Westergaard had a hard time earning from others, for as long as he could remember. So the young man often spoke in guarded phrasing.

"I must thank God for that, at least! Now I just have to hope those miscreants stay true to their word and don't try to catch up with Aged P or my sisters, either. I agreed, as the son, that I would do the talking for my family and take full responsibility for whatever went wrong in the deal." Big Nose raises his praiseful eyes to the same God of Abraham, Jacob and Moses that Hans believed lived in the Nazarene.

"So what deal gone awry would irk those violent men enough to cause your battered internment, Big Nose?" The Danish man takes a break from his struggling wrists and ankles to catch a breath, trying to muddle through Big Nose's account to this brutal aggression.

"I don't know if you're aware of it, as a high-class young gentleman who may not have need for baubles and precious stones and jewelry, but my family has been, for generations, purveyors of fine gold and silver jewelry. And the most exquisite gems of the highest quality first water, we custom offer to exclusive clients for intricate jewelry settings." Even though Big Nose claimed he was independent and reformed from the gold, silver and gemstones of his, at times, questionably shady heritage of growing up as a dealer, he was still a good salesman for his clan's family business.

"Then your family **does** deal in jewelry. Specifically in the issue of rings, I daresay. I offer my conjecture." Putting the pieces together, Hans muses aloud, trying to connect the dots between a gold and diamond brilliants business and the violent thugs sanctioned by their prestigious leader, who had ties to Egeskov, to beat up Big Nose's face.

"After they tried to thrash some answers out of me about Aged P, those losers took me upstairs to meet with their boss. So I told him that, as an upstanding citizen, and not in the business anymore, I have been busy with my wedding. And the Count promised to leave my sickly Aged P out of this if I took the full responsibility to explain about the innocent mixup to the client." Big Nose had expressed his concern for his aged father to the leader of the apprehenders.

"Such a cruel man's word is meaningless, my friend." Hans knew from experience that Instructor Rügen's word, in matters of this sort, was as worthless as a cracked wineglass—and just as sharp and dangerous.

"But… he is kind of classy and well spoken with a foreign accent, a lot like yours… Hans… By the way, where are you from?" Big Nose, in assessing the big bad boss' mannerisms, suddenly starts to slit his boggled eyes to take a closer look at his handsome cellmate.

 ** _GULP._**

"Denmark's Southern Isles. Namely, Castle Egeskov. Though, I must inform you, I was disowned by my father and dozen brothers two years ago. Not that I was ever welcome there for as long as I have been alive. They sent me off to a charity school to grow up most of my childhood, so I don't know much of the dealings of the kingdom." Hans honestly answers, though feeling a bit like he was being interrogated, by the swift doubt in Big Nose's eyes.

"Disowned? Unwanted? Poor guy!" But the goodness shows through soon enough in the former crook's thick accented voice. Big Nose leans in closer towards Hans, wanting to give the beleaguered boy a hug. But his shackled chains hold him back from reaching the other man. "If I didn't have Aged P and my sisters – wheesh! – I think I'd go plain stir crazy." Big Nose's deep attachment to his family was touching. It showed Hans how far the Snuggly Duckling resident would go to protect his close-knit kinfolk.

"I envy your warm sentimental attachment to your family, friend." The boy who never knew the love of a family like that whispers with a wry smile tickling his lips.

Just then, his hands are able to wriggle free from one of their bonds. The Prince cleverly manages to nearly turn his lithe, ambidextrous arms and muscular body into a virtual contortionist pretzel in order to reach into his inner shirt pocket for a special hidden treasured item that traveled with the Danish Prince everywhere for almost as long as he could remember.

"Do you think you can stretch your hand out enough for me to cut you free?" The industrious Dane displays the glistening silver steel nib pen that had been given to him as his one and only present – birthday, Christmas, or otherwise—granted him at Egeskov Castle, at age four, by a visiting dignitary.

In the almost total lack of light within this iron bar cage cell station in the ship's dark bilge hold, he extends the sharp nib out towards a back turned Big Nose as far as his arm could stretch.

"Aww! Oh!… Oof… That smarts!...Argh!... Sorry… I don't think I can make it." All distorted and comically knock kneed disjointed, but no closer to Hans' already overextended form, Big Nose attempts to contort his not so limber, not so agile body, and fails miserably.

Abruptly, just then, a clicking sound of footsteps on the metal grate somewhere close by causes both of the guilty wild-eyed pair to frantically return back to their original places in the cage cell, as guiltless as doves.

"Psst! Psst! You down there, Kid? 'Cause, if you ain't, I've looked practically everywhere else on this bloody clipper ship. Top to bottom, stem to stern. Except the between deck. Oh Lord, don't let my Lillebror be stuck in that blasted between deck again! I just washed myself, thoroughly." Flynn Rider's aggravated voice speaks in low whispered tones as he trudges towards the bilge's lower deck dark corridors, complaining to himself aloud.

"How the hell are we supposed to break Big Nose out of the ship if we can't even find one another?! When I catch your skinny ass, am I going to give it a tanning like you've never seen, for running off like that –" Venting his frustration in the only way he knew possible –verbosely– Eugene walks right by their cell in the darkness without even noticing Hans and Big Nose's body wrigglings to gain his attention silently.

"Storbror!" A smile tracing his lips, Hans was appreciative to count at least one of his family members to care if he lived or died, in this one unlikely big brother he discovered himself, quite by accident, during their shared adventure in Norway.

"Now I know what it's like being on the other side of the bars, for once. It is decidedly more pleasant from this end. I tell you, me." Never at a loss for words, Eugene Fitzherbert peers through the cage door at Hans and Big Nose, who were trapped inside.

"I have been tearing my hair out looking for you, Kid! Don't you ever do that to me again! I'm the big brother who's supposed to do all the stupid, brash, headstrong stunts, you hear me!?" Eugene scolds, as every big brother had a right to do, while his own deft hands were already idly lock picking at the padlock that kept the cells closed around his little brother and pub thug friend.

"Prowling around ships in the middle of the night, en route to God knows where… That's more up my street, Sideburns. But I see you found Big Nose. Whoa. That's a nasty pair of shiners you got there, pal. Just as long as the rest of you is still functional enough – if you know what I mean - for me to return you to your goodly new wife, without that spunky little gal of yours having to whup my sorry butt. After circling around on a flying horsey for the past two hours plus, tailing you, little bro, waiting for a choice moment when those rotating ugly bruiser lackeys vacated the deck, my rear end was itching to touch down for a stretch on this sweet little vessel you cavalierly chose to hijack. K-Ching! All right! One rusted, old padlock bites the dust to this talented ten thiefy digits in thirty seconds flat. Beat that kid. Everyone out of the pool."

So full of himself and his undeniable skilled fingertips when it came to the art of lock picking, Flynn Rider flaunts his genius one octave too loudly as he flips his metal locking device around one of his index finger arrogantly, until it bangs against the metal bars like a dinner bell.

It was just Flynn Rider's dumb luck, that one of the marauding minions wandering around the ship of Count Rügen, just happened to be passing by the stairwell that led down to the hold. The assiduous fellow, alerted by the clanging of metal to metal, goes to investigate what he thought was a conversation as the dark hooded man stealthily descends to the prisoners' hold.

"Okay! Who gets rescued first by the inimitable Flynnigan Rider, boys?" Flynn self-importantly shows off his burglar lock pick set, as the good-looking thief pushes open the cell's iron bar squeaking, rusty door.

"I wonder how many poor saps suffered in here…" Flynn, in the corner of his eyes, notes years of deep scratches and desperate indentations carved in the wooden strake floor. The fingernail gnashings on the worn and rusty metal door from those who had been interned here once upon a time were creepy.

The bloodstained streaks across the never scrubbed plank floor of the cage within, send shivers at the sight of such a trap, full of various sharp torture devices, multiple shackles, chains, ropes and clamps that all showed way too much usage over the years of this brutal ship owner's cruel unrestraint.

Definitely not a vacation stop that free as a bird Flynn Rider even liked to look at in horror pulp fiction, never mind physically enter of his own volition. But for the sake of saving his shackled brother and tied down friend, to cross the petrifying threshold, this hero must.

But no sooner does Eugene just finish unbinding single shackle Big Nose at Hans insistent request, does that nasty piece of work sneering guard creep up from behind in shadows to shove Flynn to the floor with the others inside.

The burly, strapping henchman uses his brawny body to hold closed the unlatched door behind him as his eyes search the ground for the padlock to the door. But looking inside, he could see that it was still in the greedy paw of that blasted master thief who just picked it.

"Count Rügen! Men! Back up! I require back –" As the broad shouldered, big boned sentinel starts to cry out up towards the stairwell above, quite acrobatic – when needs must – Eugene nearly double backflips toward the cage door. Armed with nothing but the large iron padlock, the reactive thief reaches through the bars to slam the noggin of the dark hooded man on the outside, barricading them in. Flynn's dexterous hands had struck so hard that he instantly knocks the liveried servant out cold.

"I've got Job hovering up there with our flying fillies, Big Nose! You scram as fast as your short scrawny legs can carry you up to the rear of the ship's top deck! Job'll pick you up there! No use risking a clear path, waiting for us, when you've got the chance to escape now! We'll catch up as soon as I get Hans' shackles loosed! Come on, move! Up the companionway, hang a left at the top forecastle deck! Hurry!" Prince Eugene Fitzherbert of Corona commands his subject, well-versed by now at these damn seacraft he always seemed to get in a pickle within, to know his escape route way around it.

Big Nose pauses, undecided if he should skedaddle or wait for this pair of her heroic brothers, who just got involved in this to rescue him.

"What are you still doing here, you stupid fool?! Hilde's waiting for you back in Corona Castle! You got a wife to live for now, man! GET OUT OF HERE!" Eugene barks over his shoulder to the uncertain public house frequenter, while working feverishly at Hans' double ankle shackles with his handy lockpick.

"But I made a deal with that Count. He promised –" Big Nose begins to protest, trying to be selfless as any son should be for his parent.

"Rügen is the kind of man who breaks promises, Big Nose. I know him personally from my youth. He can't be trusted at all." With a serious look in his eye, his hands free at last, Hans pipes up from where he was utilizing his silver nib pen to finish sawing through the thick hemp ropes tying down around his waist now.

Locking eyes with Hans, giving the Danish Prince his trust, a limping from being beat up and tied it down for so long, Big Nose finally takes to his punchdrunk feet. He trips over the downed unconscious guard with the symbol of a golden anchor on his cockeyed cape-hood as the former felon races out through the open cell door.

"We'll be waiting for you guys up top!" As Big Nose disappears up the steps, Eugene finishes unhitching one of the halyard clamps used in boat rigging that was holding Hans down. He then goes to work on the next.

"Why the heck did these losers feel they had to clamp you down with two shackles, tie back both of your hands, and secure your waist with such a thick–"

"– rope. How did you do that? That sucker had to be three inches in diameter!" Eugene asks incredulously when the redhead manages to free his own hands from behind his back.

"With this!" Holding the little silver nib to the sky, Hans enthusiastically answers Eugene. The Danish prince was so proud of his little gifted pen that, to him, was often mightier than the sword that was no longer strapped to his belt due to its confiscated by Count Rügen earlier.

"It's a pen." With droll condescension in his deadpan voice, unconvinced Flynn's heavy-lidded, shifty eyes and skeptical, smug mouth observe how his little brother, for once, was acting like a little kid in his excited pride to produce the unimpressive multi-functional gadget.

"Ookay. Now let's get the hell out of –" Eugene, after tucking away his own tools of the trade that he couldn't leave home without, goes to lift his amusing little brother to his feet from the blood stained cage floor and helps shoulder Hans, who was still recuperating from surgery.

 _Was that just yesterday?_

"Nostradamas! Nostradamas! Nozzy-boy! Where am I?! Where is this place? It's so dark, your Aged P can't see anything… Nozzy-boy!" A small frail voice comes out of the darkness of a cabin along the corridor the brotherly pair already passed in their flight to the surface.

"Is that who I think it is?" As they pass that locked cabin, Hans whispers in Eugene's ear as the pair were close to the top of the companionway steps. They would be just in time to miss being caught in their escape by the stampede of feet charging in the opposite direction behind them, if they continued on in blissful ignorance.

"You go on, Storbror. Take the mares and leave to get help fro the authorities." Hans says stoically, extricating his arm from around Eugene's supportive shoulder.

"I know, I know. Gotta save even decrepit old geezers, not too far from the grave naturally, from certain doom. Tell me again, why do you always have to be a hero, 24/7, Handsome?" Flynn was sighing as he backtracks several feet to rejoin Hans where the redhead had stopped to kneel and pick the lock at that culpable cabin door where Aged P's plaintive old voice was emanating from.

"Perhaps, because I have much to make up for, in my unworthy life _._ Or, perhaps, because I don't 'have a wife to live for'."

 _And never will deserve to have her for my wife…_

His resigned mind tacks the sad thought onto his cocky repeat of Eugene's earlier words to Big Nose, as Hans emerald green orbs lock for one forever moment in his brother's amber gold ones.

"Don't play that crap on me, Sideburns. You can't use my own snow job on me. Besides, doesn't the Good Book say something about 'brothers doing for brothers and sticking together'?" Steadying Hans where the younger lad was crouched down and attempting to jimmy the lock with his handy-dandy pen, though his bruised wrists were far too shaky to accomplish such a delicate task, Eugene kneels beside him to quickly finish off the lock of the cabin door.

 _"'And the King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did it for_ _Me_.' Matthew 25:40. _"_ Hans answers simply, the Lord's holy words never too hard for even his addled brain to recall as he dizzily presses a hand to lean against the corridor wall.

"No wonder you can't keep your head on straight from being woozy when it's been used so frequently for a community punching bag, Lillebror. Sheesh! Look at that crater in your skull! I don't know how much blood you've got left in ya, after all this. But I wouldn't advise getting poked full of holes many times more, if I were you."

"Voila! Stand back, old man, if you know what's good for you!" Eugene, without much forewarning, kicks in the door, then rushes in to pick up the bent over, frail form of the elderly Jewish father from where Aged P was coughing up spasms on the bed.

"Let's put a fire under it and get moving, Kid!" Eugene throws Aged P over his wide shoulders and runs double time like a linebacker through the ship's corridors towards the companionway steps that he takes two or three and four at a time, his heroic adrenaline pumping.

"I've got your back, Storbror." Hans turns to follow his brother's lead, more slowly than his normal swift gait, due to sudden vertigo-like head trauma pain. There was only a little more between here and the aft stern where Job and Big Nose and the trio of flying horses were doubtlessly hovering overhead, waiting for them, as stated.

But as Hans runs forward, something metallic clatters down the corridors into the clipper's companionway steps to his feet.

A gleaming thin bladed foible was facing the trained fencer's direction as if in a challenging dare.

"You pick up that Épée sword, young Prince, and I will have every right to behead these two in self defense. Their spilled blood will be on your hands, Devil Boy, in retribution for all your crimes since your birth. You and this trash both." Still evil after all these years, and holding grudges, Count Rügen cruelly taunts Hans. The malicious man just needed any excuse to strike both his nemesis' brother and Big Nose's father, and use the hostages against Hans spitefully.

The bleak night sky and muggy atmosphere behind Rügen's sneering dark appearance as he halts Eugene and his Aged P passenger at the cusp of the exit would strike fear into many a stouter heart.

And right now, Hans Westergaard's aching corpuscle was no exception, especially since he knew the black-hearted man had little compunction to carry out his foul threat of decapitation with relished zest.

"Leave them alone, Master Rügen. Please, I beg of you. Take your wrath out solely on me." Hans obsequiously bows his head, praying that the ruthless royal retainer would indeed comply. Hans kicks the offered sword away, his vulnerable hands up in the air unequivocally.

" **You** beg **me** , dear little Prince? After all the ignominious debasement you brought upon me?" Count Rügen flexes his knobbly, disfigured left hand that no longer had his extraordinary polydactyly anomaly, thanks to this despicable and cursed, young rogue.

"So be it! Yes, it is the King's birthday once again. And all of your brethren and their families will be present in Egeskov. The only thing I look more forward to than punishing this dubious old Jew before the Royal Court there, is ridiculing your scrawny hide before your Father. Even better, I will charge you, Prince Hans, for commiserating and colluding, not to mention plotting his duplicitous escape from lawful capture with this foul charlatan jewel thief swindler lowlife." The bearded, prejudiced middle-aged man seem to thrive on tormenting Hans. Their old quarrel that cost Count Rügen his special extra finger was one that would never be forgotten or forgiven.

"Finally I will prove how even more worthless you have become, you disowned, and disinherited satanic wretch, for the likes of thieves and thugs you keep the company of. You will never be hailed as some saintly prodigal son come back to the fold." Sadistic, bigoted Rügen, with a clipped finger wave, calls down the hall for two of his henchman to take hold of a snidely smirking Eugene and consequently, Aged P to be removed from Flynn Rider's hefted shoulders.

Rügen himself briskly walks forward down the hall towards Hans and uses the sword that he had confiscated from him earlier — interestingly a Norwegian Kommander's sword of the Sjoforsvaret Admiralty, that gave blade weapon collector Rügen cause to ponder how this unwanted son came upon such a valuable and honored weapon — to raise its hilt high over Hans already injured head, intending to hit him again, perhaps fatally this time, in the exact same spot…

"Hey! Watch the wares, Ugly! I don't know who you are exactly, Count Rügen-Toogen, but you sure don't got the wisdom of **JOB**! I hate to be the one to **INFORM** you, pal, but we've got more manners in **CORONA** than you got in your entire overweight body! Maybe my good friend, and workout instructor, **SCHMIDT** could **HELP** teach you a thing or two about **KING** & **QUEENLY** Royal hospitality from our **SNUGGLY DUCKLING** Tavern gents than you can learn in your high-faluting **KINGDOM of EGESKOV** on your missing little pinkie finger! **NOW, HURRY UP** and **GET** us **BACK** in our **HOME** y cell down in the bilges, you ugly bunch of bloodsuckers, so you can put us on display in your **PALACE** Carnival show before pops, the King!" Eugene enunciates loudly certain pronounced keywords amidst his garrulous in-code to get help back from Corona Castle authorities, being shouted out to Job and Big Nose, who were still unseen in the dark night sky hovering with all three of the Snow Queen's flying horses above the clipper.

"Oof!" One of the guards, having enough of Flynn Rider's inexplicably inane, glib speech of insanity, finally slams Eugene in the gut with his rifle butt, causing the man to double over in pain.

But intelligent Job had gotten the message, and the trio of horses silently verge away from the craft below with Big Nose, back towards Prussia at full speed.

"Gee, thanks. I take coffee black with four lumps of sugar, and one egg, over easy, on one piece of toast, in the morning. And so do my compadres." Flynn jovially chokes out, acting the fool's part to keep their team's communicated artifice under wraps. He lets the larger bodied Danish stooge drag him and Aged P back down towards the bilge's lower cell by their shirt collar necks.

But at least they still had their necks attached. Flynn Rider knew he owed that courtesy to his little brother's immense self-discipline not to lay one finger on the sword Eugene was sure that Hans, damn dexterous with a blade, could've taken them all down with, given the chance. Though probably not without himself and Aged P as collateral damage fallen casualties.

 _Come on, Handsome! Quit moving and fall over! Play dead already_ _!_ _Although he was never one to use that particular jewel of wisdom himself, Flynn peers through one half lidded eye as he's dragged away. Well beyond worried about Hans and the vendetta that this nutty cracked cookie of a Count seem to be holding against him, Eugene mentally sends out some big brotherly advice to the young man who was being repeatedly kicked by the vicious old sycophant of Hans' father's kingdom._

 _Oh. I guess he's my good 'ole_ ** _Pops,_** _too…_

"Let us see how pretty your face will be in royal court after I –" Just about to stomp one vindictive boot to forever scar Prince Hans of the Southern Isles' comely features, Count Rügen is thrown off-balance by a sudden massive wave that nearly capsizes the clipper ship that depended on the vagarities of the wind by design. The wicked fencing instructor goes skittering down the ship's corridor hall, totally off balance.

"Are you all right, sir? That was some wind squall burst just now that I've never seen in all my years at sea! Shall I take the prisoner below, sir?" An eager, wandering menial underling takes the prerogative to pick up Hans' bruised and battered, bloody body from being strewn all over the main corridors of the 'Sjette Doigt' ( _'The Sixth Finger'_ ) steam sailing vessel as the sharply raked ship rolls back into a more even keel again.

"Yes. Take the rubbish out of my sight." The bitter older man spits out in retort over Hans' unconscious form. Master Rügen was glad, if nothing else, to have the enjoyment of tormenting this youngest Westergaard son who had been the instrument of his shame, to look forward to upon their return to Egeskov.

 _Red devil boy. The Evil One must be watching out for you, intermingling with heathen. But I will humiliate you here on earth in your father's presence, once and for all, until you will never be allowed to return to society again, where you didn't belong in the first place, as discarded wretch. That is, if capital punishment is not your reward for aiding and abetting these dire, ungodly criminals. Either outcome, I will have my revenge…_

But what Rügen, in his own narrow-minded sinfulness of superiority, didn't realize, was that it was God, not Lucifer, who blesses the outcasts who believe more than judge, and offers wretches who repent, not scorn, but salvation with His amazing Grace…

 _'For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation and adorn the wretched with victory.' Psalm 149:4_

And the sleek clipper ship, moving northeast through the straits, rides now on peaceful, still waters through the calm sea…

* * *

 _Early morning sunrise, Kvaerndrup,_ _Funen_ _,_ _Denmark_ _._

Elsa had been traveling by horse on Sitron, periodically switching from cantor to trot to gallop, and frequently stopping to give the horse and Marshmallow both a break. The trio had crossed over the many hours it took to traverse the nearly thirty-five kilometers between where the road direction marker had stated the distance would take to arrive at this town and the Southern Isles where a certain Kingdom's Castle existed.

The 'Garden Island' of Funen, sported Denmark's most dramatic beautiful scenery of summer flora, as well a stunning vista of the South Funen archipelago and all its straits, bays, and inlets. Even the sunrise here seemed especially breathtaking to Elsa as she galloped on Sitron, taking in all the lush scenery with her exotic large luminescent eyes.

But perhaps it wasn't the lovely scenic villages, nor garden orchards, nor rolling green hills that the sun first graced with radiance in the early morn that took her breath away.

Maybe it was the dreamy romantic thought that the cold detached young woman once thought impossible for herself, now that she was standing on the soil not her own. Instead it was a new land that a particular handsome hero and Prince had been born to…

 _Elsa! Stop being so… obsessed in your stray thoughts concerning a certain titian haired handsome Prince of the Southern Isles! You don't even know if he's here. You don't even know if he wants to see you again, no matter how much you wish to see him!_

Speaking to herself as if she were another person in argumentative conversation, the levelheaded young Queen chuckles at herself as she pauses in her horseback journey again to rest and gain her bearings.

The closer the trio (plus seven stowaway snowgies) approach the rural town of Kvaerndrup, Sitron fortunately starts to recognize the well-traveled paths that led to a small, almost unnoticed village on the outskirts of the expansive royal estate.

"I believe we're getting very close to our destination. Marshmallow, I'm going to have to ask you to stay obscured behind the hill rises as much as possible and pretend to be one yourself, should anyone pass by as we near the Egeskov Castle complex. Remember how I taught you to be discreet. Try to blend in with the scenery. And don't talk to strangers when I am inside. I know it'll be hard, but I'm relying on you to watch over the seven snowgies and keep out of trouble, okay?" Like a mother hen anxious for her frozen chicks, Elsa says to the big snow monster as she gives Sitron a drink of water from a pail the independent Queen had herself drawn from a nearby public well, without using her powers.

Much.

"Oh, hello there. Good morning! Who are you talking to, dear? Which fine lady of the castle do you belong to, Dearie? My, my, your beautiful dress is a mess! Did your Lady give you that hand-me-down? She must be very generous and genteel a woman. One of our kingdom's sons is a very lucky man. Did it happen when you were drawing the water? That is a heavy big pail for such a thin, pale, young girl! But it's the wiry ones who can do the most work, they do say…" The chatterbox sweet, plump cheeked, prettily smiling little woman, just a few years older than Elsa, comes up behind the tall Queen at the town well.

"Am I talking too much without introducing myself? My ladies all say that! Hee hee! Let's chat and make friends over a nice tea of toast and jam at my favorite café in town. Ha ha ha ha! In fact, it's really the only café in town! Come, it's lovely, I'll take you there!" Elsa could plainly see that the talkative, personable, twenty-something young woman was easy to make friends with.

The short and stocky, hard to class as 'petite' or 'diminuitive', despite her vertically challenged height, dark brown haired woman of twenty-six years of age assumes that the disheveled-after-her-long-ride platinum blonde was yet another one of the multiple ladies' maids and traveling companion servants of the castle visitors. These curious, busy servants had been wandering the streets of this estate town early in the morning before their masters and mistresses awakened, since they arrived, one or two at a time over the past couple days, with one or another of the visiting dignitaries or royal Southern Isles' sons and their wives.

"My name is Daphne. I'm the ladies' maid of Princess Marguerite, who is attending the King's birthday celebration with Ivers – I mean **Prince** Ivers, her husband, the King's fourth in line son. We just arrived here by coach from France, where we live now, for the King's birthday in two days' time." There was something a little strange about the way the boisterous brunette's constant smile wavered when she, unprompted, informed the quiet Norwegian Queen of her status and exactly whom she was in service of.

Daphne's plump cheeks blushed particularly at the name of her Princely master, which her tongue too familiarly tripped over without proper royal title, as was the demanded etiquette of the day. Maybe she had merely misspoken. But Elsa's blue eyes narrow to glimpse the way Daphne's vibrant blue eyes danced in the awakening sunlight at the mere mention of the name of her lord and master, Prince Ivers.

But Elsa had much more to think about than any illicit palace romance intrigue. Especially if it did not concern her locating her Prince Hans, which was her only reason for her entering into this kingdom in the first place.

"But enough about me. Who are you here in the service of, Dearie? They must be very fond of you to let you borrow a palace steed to come to town from the Castle!" The friendly woman shakes her dizzy head out of the clouds as the pair of young women stroll down the cobblestone street with Elsa leading Sitron to follow close behind.

"Oh, yes… Hee hee hee… Who I work for…?" Not too well versed with answering impromptu questions spontaneously, Elsa's suddenly confronted mind weighs her options as Daphne leads her into the café's side back entrance for those in servitude.

 _This just may be a more convenient and informative ticket into_ _Egeskov_ _Castle_ _, if I was to obtain entrance as a mere servant. Certainly fewer questions will be asked. After all, I have no proper representative to announce my queenly arrival. And that could take days to gain an audience with the King, even if I do find someone in these parts. Especially with all of his relations here attending a birthday celebration, there will be confusion... Hmmm…_

 _Why not!?_

 _Lord, please forgive this little white lie I must tell this nice young woman so I can remain incognito here in this foreign land, for now._

"I am actually the castle's new…" But Elsa, though very skilled and intelligent in many endeavors, was not the gifted in the art of deception. Her eyes wildly glance about the busy cobblestone street for some brilliant idea to fill in the blanks of her occupation or trade business here in this unfamiliar kingdom.

That's when, upon entering the bustling café through the kitchen, her blue eyes catch sight of a waitress bringing in a pail of freshly squeezed milk.

 _That's right! Kristoff taught Anna and I how to milk cows last summer when we were on our way to the Ice Palace and Anna brainstormed to make fresh ice cream!_

"I'm the Castle's new milkmaid." Elsa announces proudly, recalling the happy scene with her sister and Olaf and Sven with fond memories. That is, until she realized what a lowly position, out in the dirty stables, she had just stepped herself into.

"And I can be a pinch-hit parlour and chamber maid. And scullery maid, too, if the kitchen needs help for the special royal birthday celebration week of cookery." Elsa hurriedly adds a list of servile jobs she'd be willing to undertake so the clever girl could be accessible to the stable, in housing Sitron and attending Marshmallow outdoors, and also play an unimportant role as chamber maid in cleaning the rooms, bringing up the water and tending fires. While serving tea as a parlour maid made it possible for her to be present to listen in on any pertinent conversation going on in the upstairs hierarchy of the great house, too. Mixed up in a confusion of the many visiting servants swarming the castle would give Elsa a chance for a thorough search in all areas for her adored, missing prince.

"Oh, my, you're a busy go-getter of a girl! How nice! I always love to make fast friends with the house kitchen staff, especially the girl who can sneak me some of the morning's new cream and cheese to put on the baked bread I pinch from the cook!" Plump, pleasant Daphne giggles in delight, twirling on her twinkle toes at the thought of yummy dairy products dancing in her head.

"I knew you and I would be bosom friends, the first moment I laid eyes on you at the well! Oh, how silly! I haven't even asked your name yet, did I?! I was talking too much again!" The ditzy woman places a friendly, warm arm around Elsa's cool shoulders as the plump and healthy brunette squeezes the thin lissome blonde like they had been old friends for years.

"My name…? Oh, right, we did skip that, didn't we? My name is… Elsie." Hearing his melodic voice speak the domesticated bovine nickname in her spinning head, Elsa, bites her own to tongue as she relinquishes herself back in the role of the lowly servant scullery maid that Hans Westergaard had first dubbed for her onboard that pirate ship.

With a smile tugging at her mouth, Elsa recalls when Hans shocked her by feigning to the pirate that the prim and proper Queen would play the role of a simple maid that he had been dallying with when she first had been caught on board the Pearl Lady, what seemed a lifetime ago. His stunning first kiss still lingered on her insensible lips from that first moment of longing until right now.

"Elsie the milkmaid! How cute! I love it! Now let's get you changed from that muddy old thing! I've an extra maid's dress – from my slimmer days, mind you – that I can never bear to give away yet, with hopes that I will return to having a figure again. _Sigh._ As if that will ever happen again, after… Anyway, the frock, with a little taking in, will fit you nicely. As if a slim little waist like yours is even possible for a woman like me anymore!" Daphne's sing-songy sweet high voice rings like a tinkling bell through the café as she dragged Elsa – Elsie – into an empty back larder room of her beloved bakery establishment and sizes her pudgy fingers around Elsa's minuscule waist area.

The veteran toast and jam girl had been a frequent guest of her hometown bakery and often pitched in to help finish preparing the baked goods in rush-hours such as these. That was before palace servitude left its mark on the young woman, and took her as far away from Egeskov as Paris, to be a Princess' ladies' maid.

Her own personal bag still in hand after asking to be dropped off at her favorite bakery here from the royal coach that went on to Egeskov, Daphne busily sets to changing a shy Elsa from her dirty and mud stained, yet obviously a stunning, exquisite and rich dress. Daphne coos and gossips of the prestigious kingdom and its many handsome sons and footmen, and manservants that Elsa would meet during this hoopla special week. Beyond the celebration of the Danish monarch's 72nd birthday, there was much excitement in the servants' quarters that a pair of visiting, just beyond teenage, young Russian princesses were finally of age for the two last sons of the manor – twins Ruddi and Rune – to woo and finalize their engagement, as had been arranged these past few months in a hopeful deal between their optimistic fathers.

The rulers of the two contentious, on the brink of war nations were eager to seal a much desired foreign liaison for the only two sons left who were marriage-applicable, after a certain youngest boy's disowned status.

This propitious occasion would benefit both the Russian resources of plentiful coal, steel and textiles in trade for vast technological industry and shipbuilding Western knowledge from the Danes that competitively undeveloped in this area Russia still lacked.

As it was the King's birthday, the Denmark ruler's thirst for European expansion into the vast untapped resources of their Eastern neighbors, would be a great birthday present for the old man, after all.

So, as elegant Elsa, now domestic servant Elsie, steps out from the café kitchen back room, changed into the daintily pretty black-and-white maid's dress, the coquettishly flipped braid young girl unwittingly causes quite a stir. Every male eye in the room turns clumsily knock others down as several rise from their seats to get a better peek, to ogle the lovely new blonde maid entering their midst. Both servant, peasant, upper-class, regal dignitary and visitors' heads alike are turned by Elsa's dignified grace, innate poise and gentle beauty in this unexpected setting.

As each man in the room, visitor and Dane alike, salivates at the new sweet delight offering on the menu, each discerning feminine eye is impressed, but wary, of the lovely new maidservant as they all glimpse the innocent vision of an inexperienced young woman. Elsa, helping out to try to fit in with her new friend Daphne, serves them coffee and tea in a naïve, sweetly awkward way as the pure girl was determined to take on any role. Even one so small and degradingly menial, but honest, in her desperate, adventurous search to find her own missing man, and bring him back home with her…

 _But to look beyond the glory is the hardest part_ _  
 _For a hero's strength is measured by his heart.__

 _I'll be there someday!_ _  
 _I can go the distance!__

 _Because every mile has been worth my while,_ _  
 _I will go any place to find where I belong!__

* * *

 _'Sjette Doigt'_ \- 'The Six Fingers' in Danish  & French

 _Vaffler_ – Norwegian heart shaped soft waffle recipe

 _Chamber maid_ \- 19th century era servant who cleans and maintains the bedrooms, ensured fires were lit in fireplaces, and supplied hot water upstairs when required.

 _Parlour maid –_ 19th Century era servant who cleans and tidies reception rooms and living areas by morning, and often served refreshments at afternoon tea, and sometimes also dinner. They tidied studies and libraries, and (with footmen) answered bells calling for service.

 _Scullery maid –_ 19th Century era servant lowest grade of "below stairs" maid, reporting to the cook. Scullery maids were responsible for washing cutlery, crockery, and glassware, and scrubbing kitchen floors, as well as monitoring ovens while kitchen maids ate their own supper.

* * *

Memorial Day Weekend Greetings, Frozen friends!

I hope you're all having a blessed Memorial Day, giving honor to heroes, both fallen and living, who all 'Go the Distance' everyday in service to protect our great nation of peoples!

And we get to BBQ hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausages! Watermelon and potato salad and all yummy picnic foods for our tummies are in the works!

And the best part is celebrating it with our family and honoring those we know and love who have served to protect us!

I hope you can find some time in your busy celebrating to enjoy this LONG chapter! All kinds of fun, interesting unexpected things ( _like meeting new friends in the Southern Isles and signing up to be a maid in_ _Egeskov_ _Castle_ _! Huh, Queenie?_!) are happening to Elsa, on her new journey of discovery in search for her handsome Prince!

Good thing it's a 3-day holiday weekend! Whew!

As for Hans and his bashed around brothers in arms, they certainly have a lot on their plate this episode! There's a new evil villain to take on, from Hans' past, the Six Fingered man(deducted now thanks to Hans, hence eternal grudge, Count Rugen! What role has he in shaping the redheaded Prince's future?! You'll have to see!

I myself wonder what's going to happen next in this exciting tale of intrigue! These gals and fellas sure do what they want! I just follow them and tag along for the thrilling ride!

God bless you and your family, our proud soldiers, past and present among them and all the service men and women who never cease to be amazing heroes who touched our lives in big ways this holiday weekend!

Love, HarukaKou

God bless the USA!


	9. Chapter 9 - Into the Lion's Den

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 9**

 **"Into the Lion's Den"**

Meanwhile, just outside of the café's chock full of baked goods shop window, as obliging new servant girl 'Elsie' was helpfully passing out early morning crumpets, a small, horsedrawn buggy carriage clatters across the cobblestone street of the avenue.

A meek aged horse pulls the side-spring, rather antiquated buggy along the busy main road of this Southern Isles Odense town of Kvaerndrup with a pair of women seated on the front driver's bench.

The wise older passenger on the right side of the carriage bench was an elderly deaconess from the Fattigskole Convent of Noble Maidens, the placidly smiling Mother Superior, named Sister Clarice Angelica.

The short-cropped brown haired driver of the buggy had her big, bright green eyes opened wide to take in all the sights and sounds of this new land with all the curiosity of an enthusiastic child.

Each new place, every different location, to Princess Rapunzel of Corona, after all her growing up years spent locked up in a lonely tower, presented a thrilling fresh adventure that left the sweet, inquisitive girl eager to explore more.

Soon after she returned home to her parents and kingdom, Rapunzel felt the call to travel around to discover more of the world's wondrous riches that Mother Gothel had kept her 'flower' well hidden from.

After hitting the open road with her beloved Eugene and young friend Cassandra, Rapunzel had toughened up, made many new acquaintances, and had become a little more secure in herself with each passing day spent out roaming the hillsides under the sun beside the man she loved.

 _See,_ _Eugene_ _? You've taught this gal to be independent, like you. I sure hope you and Hans are here in Egeskov. I miss you so much already._ Rapunzel smiles when she sees a young man with an attempted growth of stubble on his square-jawed chin that reminded her of her absent lover.

 _No, he's not half as gorgeous as you, with or without stubble,Eugene._ Inwardly _,_ Rapunzel smiles in her reverie of imagining her narcissistic husband's predictable conversational comeback, they being together and tight for so long now.

Sick at heart all morning, Rapunzel did still feel more than a bit disturbed as to her missing other half's well-being. But the chocolate brown Prussian Princess shook her anxieties off as mere effect of the expectant day's ahead challenges for her.

And here she was now, ready to face this audacious plan to practically storm the Fortress of Egeskov Castle, with so much covert deception beneath the veil of an innocent royal visit, which Rapunzel herself dreamed up, that she knew her Flynn Rider would be proud.

 _Maybe some of your Daddy's charms did rub off on me, after all our time together. Right, Anxelin?_ Rapunzel glances from the horse's reins she had been tightly gripping down to her still slim, yet infinitesimally bulging tummy.

 _Maybe we'll even get to meet some more of your Danish uncles, as well as that paternal Grandpapa real soon. That is, if you had to stop by here for Hans' injuries,_ _Eugene_ _. Golly, I hope he's all right…_ Empathic Rapunzel considers to her naturally cautious self again how she'd gather enough gumption to waltz right into that foreboding castle, just beyond the moat they were quickly approaching.

Her wary eyes gaze at the breathtaking, scenic, yet intimidating, ware castle looming before the small castle in all its prestigious glory.

"I wonder what they're like…" Rapunzel's current, pressing question spills unintentionally from her worried lips. The answer to which the placid prioress in her religious sisterly nun's black and white habit gives Rapunzel a not-so-succinct response.

"An unpleasant, cold and conniving, heartless batch of lads whom our dear Hans was most fortunate to escape their harsh unwelcome environment thereof as a small child. Pardon my judgmental assessment, dear Lord. But not once in all those ten wonderful years we had charge of the delightful lad did his Father, nor a single one of his brethren come to visit their uprooted youngest brother." The older woman shakes her head sadly at the recall.

"Nor, according to the various sisters of the diocese of our adjunct Egeskov chapel on the castle estate, do any of those unaccounted for rowdy, ungenerous privileged boys attend services beyond outward show for Christmas, Easter and obligatory marriage ceremonies. Their dear Mother, Queen Louise, would be heartily disappointed to hear that." Frustrated herself, the head nun of this area remembers how sweetly devout that lovely frizzy curled, vibrant redhead would bow in fervid prayers for her wild bunch of boys to grow up to be good, godly men someday.

 _At least, I know of one of your children who fit that bill to make you proud, Louisa._ Sister Clarice's frown softens to think of young, thoughtful and gentlemanly Hans and the proper religious upbringing they at the Fattigskole had impressed upon him.

 _Unlike those rapscallions and their wicked loose living up at Egeskov castle complex. Our Hans was brought up a gentleman._

"So, Rapunzel, I don't wish to discourage you, but I would expect your visit in inquiry of our Hans, would be rather disagreeable to the jealous, clawing lot of them." Mother Superior says with a puckered mouth of chary disdain. "Please accept the confession of your gossiping old servant, Lord, for being severe on some of Your sinners." The grey-haired, short and stout, practical-to-the-core prioress of the Convent for Noble Sisters abbey removes her small spectacles over her agitated eyes. She glances up with solemnly closed eyes, whispering quiet supplication to God on her lips into the bright noonday sun that was glimmering down over Egeskov moat's highly reflective waters on either side of the buggy.

Rapunzel has to force herself not to giggle at the usually smiling faced, amenable nun's expression changes from scrunch-nosed sour to mournful penitent to tranquil devout in the space of ten seconds flat while the two were awaiting the drawbridge to come down to allow them passage to the other side where the church chapel was situated.

A palace guard who inspected their buggy for contraband, weapons or stowaways signals to his counterpart in the roof turrets across the moat to lower the 15th century Renaissance stone castle's imposing only entrance pathway. Rapunzel was glad now that Olaf was still safely tucked into his shivering with cold carpetbag on the seat between the women.

Sister Clarice Angelica had only been invited to Egeskov castle twice since sweet Queen Louise's untimely death in the late spring of 1826. Once for baby Hans' Christening, that Mother Superior was appalled that no one, not even the child's father attended the blessed ceremony for all the bitter anger and misery of loss that the family blamed Hans for.

The second visit came at Hans' request on the occasion of his 21st birthday and induction into the Royal Søværnets Officersskole's highest honors list for graduating top of his class. The rest of the Westergaard clan literally ignored the important event, all purposely leaving Hans out of the loop when they suddenly went to attend a hunting expedition at a nearby friend's country palace.

Uncomfortably disgraced to be the only one left to entertain, Hans spent the day with the nuns and Sitron, showing the elderly ladies his lonely haunts in this home that would never become his own, to this day.

Since the diocese's head nun had sent word ahead yesterday to her colleagues in the Egeskov chapel that she and Princess Rapunzel of Prussia would be arriving shortly to see the King and beg audience with him with the ecclesiastical envoy of a churchwoman, she reassured Rapunzel that they would be granted audience, through the proper channels, just as the perky Prussian Princess predicted.

But once inside the forbidding castle, the lovably cantankerous, aged Mother Superior was not certain how long it would actually take for Rapunzel to gain personal audience with distinguished regal King Herbert of Denmark.

Especially considering that this weekend would be the King's special 70th birthday celebration in two days' time, with many dignitary guests and extended family attending.

And, as they had all their lives, his boys would all be vying for the Danish monarch's attention and favor for whom the King would leave in ultimate command one day, at the septuagenarian's commemorative celebration…

* * *

 _Earlier today…_

It had been hard for Rapunzel to convince peppery Anna to stay a few steps behind, after the Prussian Princess had presented her idea to the accommodating Mother Superior of the Convent for Noble Maidens. But now, as the perimeter Castle guard was joined by a second to inspect their small buggy for any uninvited party crashers, the Corona Princess was relieved that Kristoff had agreed not to join them, much to Anna's pouty display.

"But if Hans _is_ there –" Anna had cried out passionately, the vivacious girl never wanting to be omitted from any adventure, even on the account of danger.

"I'll come out and get you, I promise! You guys will be close by in town, just like we discussed last night, right? But since you and Kristoff and Sven and Svala have already been seen by some of Hans' brother, they may pointedly make it more difficult for us to gain any information as to Hans' location if they discover that we are connected in any way." Rapunzel explained quite calmly to her antsy cousin. The brown-haired beauty felt it was her duty to take charge as the responsible older sister here, as opposed to Anna's rash well-intentions, irrational as they may be.

"Can _I_ come to the Palace with you, Cousin Rapunzel? I'm dying to meet Hans' brothers, and his father, and see his room, in no given order, hehe. I bet they are really warm and soft and squishy inside, once you get to know them. I swear, I won't be any trouble!" Olaf had piped up from where the optimistic snowman waddled over into the serious conversation.

"Look! Elsa taught me how to be really covert in a crowd! Watch!" With a zip-up of his mouth, the merry eyed snowman physically knocks himself apart and flat in only a few seconds time. His seals up his wide mouthed head hops into a large carpetbag along with the snowman's other various parts, including his floating personal snow flurry cloud that his discombobulated branch arms stuff along inside.

"See! In-cog-ni-to! That's me going undercover! Elsa told me all about it when we were reading one of those sa-la-ci-ous magazine stories you left hanging around the castle, Anna. Cool word, eh?" Unzipping his mouth, naive Olaf peeked his blinking black eye through a well-placed hole in the bag where his cool snow mist had been vented to leak snowflake out at the base of to not pile up too much inside. Olaf displayed how his dismembered stick arms could tug and close the carpetbag open and shut all by himself.

Now, if the loud and noisy snowman-in-a-bag could keep his zipped-up mouth closed shut tight… Rapunzel pondered the merit of having Olaf's extra set of ears and plucked out eyes in her clandestine search. It may prove advantageous to finding young Mr. Westergaard in an unknown foreign castle…

"What do you think, Kristoff?" The cocoa brown haired young woman submitted her uncertainty to the wise Wind Whisperer where he had been quietly listening, leaning his tall muscular body against the doorway of the office. He mildly glanced at a cross-armed Anna, who was stewing mad in the opposite corner, feeling totally left out of the loop.

"Okay, Olaf. If you behave by staying out of sight, and do everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – Rapunzel tells you to do, I guess you could go." He turns to the princess. "I suppose he would be an extra lookout for you. After our first encounter with those _wonderful_ princes of Egeskov, I do **not** trust leaving you alone at those Danes' mercy. If anything, at least Olaf will shake them up and cause enough confusion so you could get away. And, you could send him to come and get us in town, if Hans happens to turn up, too." Levelheaded Kristoff deliberated the Olaf question, and decided that it was never a good idea to send anyone into unknown hostile territory on their own.

Particularly the pregnant Princess, often in poor health, who could use a friendly, if not cold, shoulder to lean on for moral support.

"You worry too much! With Mother Superior, Pascal and Olaf now at my side, what could go wrong?" Rapunzel had tried to calm down the concerned mountainman's apprehensions, In doing so, she bolstered her own resolve to carry out her own stratagem for aloof kingdom penetration, by diplomatic channels.

"I still can't see why _Olaf_ and _Pascal_ get to go, and **I** don't! It's just not fair!" At this juncture, a grumbling Anna had stomped her foot to the convent floor with an unhappy countenance, like a spoiled little girl again.

"Anna, be a reasonable adult. You know that you and I were both plainly seen by those two jerks on the roof lobbing arrows at us for target practice. They're not exactly going to send out a welcome committee to greet us with trumpets and confetti at the front door. Only a lot of extra questions we don't need to answer right now." Kristoff chided his headstrong bride. Then the strong moutainman pulled her into his warm embrace that usually worked to quiet Anna's ruffled feathers.

But his Feistypants would not be so easily abated this time.

"Urgh! I AM the adult in the room, for your information, Mr. Bjorgman! After all, this was my idea to come down here in search of **that Hans,** even if I can't exactly explain why I'm doing it…" Wiggling away, Anna's ranting rail into her husband, whom she recklessly walloped in his rockhard abs gut area in retribution for his lectured scolding, finally simmered down by the end of her rabid sentence that had morphed into indeterminate, dithering doubt.

"Well I do." Rapunzel come across the convent's office to place an understanding hand upon her younger cousin's tremulous shoulder.

"You want for your big sister to find a life full of happiness and true love like you found with Kristoff, and I have with Eugene, too. You want Elsa to have the chance to find the impossible dream of love because you love her too much to let her live out her days alone, when there was someone who'd touched her heart as Hans had. I wish I had a little sister like you, Anna, to watch out for me. Whether or not you like the guy, you more want your beloved to be contented in her own choice. I think the purity of your heart is incredible, Annie." Rapunzel's large expressive eyes glimmered with pride at the orangey caramel young girl she considers her little sister now too, as the pair shared a sweet hug.

"I really just want to find Hans alive so I can kick him in the butt for breaking my Elsie's heart. That's all." Loving warm hugs, like Olaf, Anna hides her teary eyes in big sister Rapunzel's welcoming shoulder with that self-delusion and a soft smile up at her Kristoff watching from behind them.

"Right. Let's find Hans first, so you can kick his… _butt_?...to your hearts content, little sis." Repeating the uncomfortable crass phrase that reminded her of the Snuggly Duckling gang Anna would be right at home with, Rapunzel patronized the stubborn, ginger firebrand whom she considered the baby of herself and Elsa's trio of bonded sisterhood.

As she patted Anna on the back, Olaf's detached twig arms poked out from the carpetbag in a silent plea to share in the warm hug.

Rapunzel and Anna both laughed together when they, as one, lifted the snowman stuffed carry bag and comically gave the luggage their shared warmest embrace.

* * *

 _Present time again, mid-morning Egeskov…_

Elsa, upon Sitron, gave Daphne a ride behind her, as they move towards the looming castle's many silvery teal conical towers that hovered above opulent and imposing Egeskov's 66-room, grandiose fortress, made of several thick layers of monk's brick and impenetrable stone.

Elsa of Arendelle, herself going ' _incognito undercover,'_ in her refitted borrowed black-and-white maid's frock and apron, unassumingly as possible follows Daphne to enter into the castle servants' rear entrance.

After the sweet-voiced, friendly woman introduced shy-eyed Elsa as the new household parlor maid/chambermaid/milkmaid to many of the other grateful for any help other servants downstairs, she met with a few of the visiting ladies' maids who were scurrying about the large bustling kitchen.

Each maid, having foreign accents and style of dress, were trying to secure their demanding mistresses' breakfast in bed or arrival tea and crumpets. The plump ladies' maid, Daphne herself was required to attend to her own lady, Princess Marguerite of Orleans soon after showing Elsa the ropes.

So once Daphne bid 'Elsie' adieu and good luck on her first day on the job, promising to meet the new slender blonde maid down here in the kitchen for a late lunch, Elsa was left alone to cope with her new chores.

After a quick stepped investigation of the downstairs domestics area, though highly unlikely Hans was there, Elsie put on her working girl's cap.

The elegant young Queen was not too snobby to get her hands dirty as Elsa, immediately ingratiates herself to Egeskov's cook by averting a fire on the hot stove top. Several of the chaotic ladies' maids and rustling around visiting servants who didn't quite know their way about this particular kitchen had crashed into one another close by the flaming hot stove top. Consequently they spilled a tub of grease next to the sausages and scrambled eggs and French toast being hurriedly prepared all atop the flaming hot stove top.

With a little bit of a discrete ice cooling wave of mastery at the flick of her magical wrist when all were in a cloud of puffed powdered sugar smoke, Elsa quickly put out the ensuing stoked flames that the rashly knocked over oil and powdered sugar spill across the hot grates caused.

"My, you are wonder was putting out fires, Elsie, dear! A powdered sugar and lard spill like that directly to the flame should've set this whole end of the kitchen on fire! Not to mention my entire section of afternoon pies and cakes! Especially that birthday cake I have been slaving over for the past week! Such a pretty young thing like you must be a good luck charm, I tell you, sweetie! Ha ha! And just look at those pretty white hands a-scrubbin' the hot stove! You should learn a thing or two from your tall new friend, Daisy, with your grubby little paws that are too lazy to do anything with initiative!" The large framed, obese cook, who looked like she liked her own food, marvels with a big laugh at this new scullery maid's pristine white digits. The fat woman waves Elsa's fingers around for all to see clutched in her red chubby ones, showing Elsa off like a prized dish.

Fortunately, Elsa had enough control over her ice powers to instantly switch them off, now that she was more acquainted with her heart, to not mind the virtual stranger's complimentary bold touch.

So with her scullery maid career a roaring, flaming success, right out of the box, Elsa, once the uproar of the morning meal had passed, next puts on her pretty little parlor maid lacy cap to help deliver the upstairs' afternoon tea.

Rushed off her feet by the high velocity demand for nonstop hot tea and coffee served with cakes and freshly baked refreshments to the dignitaries and their wives, Elsa does her best to keep her head down and eyes averted as she silently and inconspicuously serves the repast.

The Queen of Norway personally had been acquainted with at least two or three of the Spanish, French and Italian representatives of their nations, and did not wish for any of them to inadvertently blow her cover.

However, she was unfamiliar enough with many of the tall, dark and devastatingly handsome, fine cut figures of several men scattered around the reception rooms to not pay attention. Mainly because she had a distinct feeling that many of the certainly striking and attractive faces of these cultured men must've been Westergaards.

 _Hans' older brothers._

She cautiously weaved in and out through all the visitors like a sleek platinum cat, alongside a series of other maids and footmen and service of all shapes and sizes, who were each grateful to have her unexpected help in the chaotic business. As she did, Elsa's artistically trained eye was doing her best to retain each distinguished face in assessment.

After all, she had to decide which one may be pliable enough – or trustworthy, perhaps - to lead her to where Hans may be on the vast estate premises.

If, in fact, he was there at all.

The entire morning and afternoon had been a blur of an introduction memory game of new faces and places for the inundated young woman who flitted between the spacious Yellow Morning Room furnished with Louis XVI settees and armchair furniture and the Victorian Reception Room full of painting and delicate sculptures.

And finally there was the Knights Hall Hunting Room. There, the disturbing array of animal pelts, decapitated heads and antlers lining the walls on either side of the huge area among the weapons and armor gear used to slay the poor unequal beasts unsettled Elsa to say the least. The rug of an African lion with a detached head staring up at her after it had been brought to heel at one oh-so-brave son or another's firearm for sport, made Elsa feel rather distressed at this kingdom's cold lack of warmth or compassion.

Hunting to put food on the table, or to make money for their furs and pelts was one thing. But hunting for the sport of hunting's sake, resulting in this disgusting superfluous amount of animal pelts and lopped off head trophies in a chaotic mass simply displayed these Princes untamed male competitiveness in some valiant attempt to show one another up, almost to a degree that was demented and sickening.

Elsa offhandedly wonders which one, if any, of these poor, deceased creatures' demise, adorning the walls of Egeskov's Knights Hall, was due to the youngest son with whom she was better acquainted.

Shaking off the thought, the young woman, whose elegant deportment had not gone totally unnoticed by more than a few of the gathering attendees, averted her exotic eyes as she served them coffee or tea. Elsa was trying to speak as little as possible, as an invisible servant was meant to fade into the background scenery.

But such a rare beauty as Elsa of Arendelle would not go unobserved for long.

As the meet and greet reception was finishing up, and most of the servants had moved on to serve lunch to their guests at a long table of the Banquet Hall, Elsa was left behind yet. The eager to please young woman had offered to clean up a knocked over hunting display where cookie and cake crumbs had been mixed into the tan pile of the lion's fur rug straddled across the waxed oak floor.

"Aren't my brothers' girls little terrors? Makes one almost envious of old Iver's barren wife. Although, a son would have come in handy with Father about now for any of us…" Checking his incredibly white, straight teeth and stroking back his debonair dark mustache in the full display knight's armor reflection, the deep bass voice of a man comes out from behind the metal suit of shining silver armor.

"I observe that you are new here, my dear. It is that you have joined our illustrious household temporarily for the purpose of our father's birthday celebration, or have you been sentenced here to witness a lifetime of rivalrous boredom we have no escape from?" The middle-aged man of 39 years of age idly blows at the red plume feather adorning the silvery helmet of the knight's armor he had been skulking behind in wait for everyone else to depart.

"Oh! I didn't see you there. Please pardon me... Your Highness." A startled Elsa gathers up the remainder of crumbs quickly into the dustpan that the severe faced housekeeper, Mrs. Folmer, had swiftly provided to the new parlour maid. The stern housekeeper had given Elsa the expressed order to tidy up after several of the young children – the King's multitude of naughty granddaughters in their mischievous attempt to outshine one another – had been mucking about causing chaos and their unruly wake.

The platinum blonde, unsteadily too quick for her off-balanced equilibrium, dizzily stands from where she had been knelt to the ground of the now practically vacated Knight's Hall to finish straightening the lopsided knight.

But the particularly well-formed, tall and vainly coiffed princely son of the King stops a startled Elsa in her industrious tracks.

"Allow me." Easily from his six-foot-three height, the tall man adjusts the crooked helmet over Elsa's straining to reach shoulder. Prince Didrik of the Southern Isles smirks a flirtatious smile down at Elsa as his fingers toy with the pair of arrows that were artfully plunged into the displayed armor's right chest and frontal metal mask area.

"Poor fellow didn't have a chance, did he? But at least the arrow did not strike him in the eye. Then he would not have had the pleasure to view such a new and thrilling, delectable sight today as you working on him, dear Elsie. What a pretty name. I congratulate our half blind Butler Folmer for his sagacious choice, for once, in choosing a parlour maid worthy of feasting one's eyes upon." The tall, dark brown haired royal Prince with a precisely neat mustache looks Elsa up and down appreciatively with his opinionated assessment.

"W-why, thank you… Your Highness." Struggling for the proper compliant word of a mere domestic, Elsa is taken off guard by this quite forward man's rakish eyes drinking her in as he sips his glass of brandy, as well as the vulgar language concerning his poor wife spoken so explicitly in public on the taboo subject of her inability to conceive.

When Prince Didrik leans his face down rather too intimately close to address the new servant so familiarly, and rather flirtatiously, it causes the disturbed girl to back up and trip over her own high piled dustpan and broom.

This action causes the dirty, dusty mess to spread again, leaving Elsa coughing in a cloud of smoke as she uncomfortably stumbles away from his questionable intentions.

"Oh dear! What a trouble! You need to get a mop now to clean this mess up, Elsie! Off with you now, my girl! Good afternoon, Master Didrik. You are looking quite dashing today. I'm sure the King will be glad to see you at his side at the dining table. I believe he is arriving in the Banquet Hall _tout de suite_." Fortunately for a frozen-in-place Elsa, cajoling French learned Daphne had just finished attending to her lady and happened to pass by the ground floor's Knights Hall on her way to the Banquet Hall where most of the guests were now gathered to await the King's appearance.

"You go take a break, Elsie. You've been at it nonstop all morning. I'll clean up that mess in there, don't you worry about it. You just go right to our room and have a lie down for yourself. I'll be up soon." Daphne whispers in her friend's reddened ear. Elsa gratefully takes a step behind Daphne and bows her head to the Prince before she scoots away from the Hall in flustered haste.

"Don't you worry. This happens all the time in castles full of young man." Daphne explains to Elsa when she joins her, soon at her heels. 'It's the fault of you being so pretty, Elsie. The poor princes aren't to blame…" Daphne seemed to speak from her own experience as she squeezes Elsa's hand tight as they go to the servant's hall, Daphne to fetch a mop and Elsa off to their attic room.

But both young women were sure they heard the debonair man chortling quite wickedly at the pair of them as they left, echoing through the castle's main lobby.

"You can run but you can't hide for long, my pale as moonlight maiden…" Used to getting what he set his sights on, Prince Didrik had a smirk on his handsome face as he walks strident and alone, twirling his mustache, towards the Great Banquet Hall. There, amidst many of his other brothers, their wives and visiting dignitaries, Didrik's Spanish Princess wife was awaiting him with a cool look in her jealous eyes at that certain jaded wanderlust on his refined face that she, unfortunately, was all too familiar with…

* * *

Elsa's light feet had taken her away from the servants' hall, and up to where her living quarters, shared with Daphne and two other ladies maids, were near Egeskov's partitioned attic.

After she had washed her face and tidied her dusted blonde hair up in a tight, less becoming up-do, the young woman secures herself to chalk the unpleasant encounter with one of Hans' brothers down to real life experience and continue on her search for her intended missing Prince, forgetting about it.

Checking her tightly pulled back blonde mane in the silvery ice mirror that belonged to the Snow Queen, after Anna had given the special item to her big sister on their trip home to keep safe for her, Elsa's eyes dance at a strange reflection.

 _Is that…a hole?_

Behind an old, broken in half screen from a woman's boudoir that had been stored up here in this unused section of the attic loft for ages, Elsa catches the glint in her mirror of something strange.

Upon closer inspection as the drafty cool breeze exuding from that ebony crack calls the Ice Queen nearer, she discovers a small gaping hole that had been almost completely obscured by the screen, and never would have been found yet, had she not been gazing into her handheld mirror at such a particular angle.

No larger than a footstool, the craggly opening in the farthest end of the attic wall stretched into utter darkness as Elsa curiously peers in. It smelled old and musty, but a familiar scent on the brisk winds racing through the corridor told the astute Norwegian Queen that there was more to this secret opening's anonymity than meets the eye.

And Elsa of Arendelle loved getting tucked under the covers with a gripping good mystery story.

Almost all of the other excess servants who had been housed in this normally unused portion of the massive castle complex had been too busy or too fearful to ever investigate the interesting double wall hidden recesses. But interested to learn more about this enigmatic place of Hans' birth, Elsa's curiosity was piqued.

Returning to her bedside to fetch her lighted candle, Elsa fearlessly ducks her slender frame behind the once stately, dilapidated screen and crawls into the well-hidden chasm that led into a long and winding full sized passage between the double castle stone walls.

Elsa had to tread carefully, purposely trying to remember her way back through the dark corridor that little natural light penetrated, lest not get lost in the winding attic path that opened up many cross-sections that led downwards or upwards along the passage. Distracted by some clattering noises in the connected third-floor hallway where some of the children were playing, the blonde Norwegian Queen takes a sudden turn somewhere in the dim candlelight.

Suddenly, an enthused Elsa thought she glimpsed, when she strained her eyes, some out of place scratchings on one of the cross members at this spot. That led her to discover what she believed was definitely a quartet of symbols denoting the Roman numeral 'VIII' (eight) carved in the wooden cavity of the door frame's upper casing, and an arrow after it signaling a right turn.

Then the Roman numeral 'I' (one) was engraved not so far down that concealed cavity behind the attic's normal path, on the interior stairwell's opposite wall construction with a chevron pointing left.

Like a game of hidden lost treasure hunt, inquisitive Elsa excitedly pursues an engraving of the Roman numeral XIV (fourteen) deeply delineated on the wooden slat floor, along with another curved arrow through the confusing warren.

After making a hairpin turn at the arrow's beckoning through these mysterious, inner narrow halls, the XIX (nineteen) had been painstakingly written in large marked bright red paint with another printed arrow forward.

Down the winding labyrinth of a secret chamber starting behind Egeskov's highest attic floor and snaking all through the castle's interior double wall, yet an additional pointed arrow summoned detective Elsa's intrigued attention to look up and read four alphabetical letters that those well inscribed Roman numerals signified –

VIII, I, XIV, XIX: spelled: **H-A-N-S.**

Printed in large, bold golden letters on the ceiling beam overhead, a long piece of fabric veiled a hidden cavity, where the spiraled path had led her, beneath the attic stairwell.

 _I knew it! Only you would be clever enough to find your way through and fashion clues through this maze as a small child!_ Elsa's pretty pale face colors with pride when her spirit recognizes the trail of clues that a young Hans Westergaard had astutely left here years ago to get through his personal secret labyrinth when he was an outcast in his own home.

Amidst two years' worth of cobwebs that her ice easily dispersed, goosebumps form up and down her arms and all of her body at this enigmatic mystery. Behind the final curtain, Elsa parts the extended old musty drape that had been tacked to the stairwell above, and she walks into a myriad of the curiosity gathered inside.

A small children's wooden chair was set before a mountain of books, well-worn with reread study on subjects that varied from swordsmanship to naval history, to the how-tos on gentlemanly posture. Leadership instruction, cartography, classic romance novels, educational books of diverse subjects, even one still opened, on the topic of natural woodland poisons located in forests of this area, were all found along the desktop with a gathering of pencils, ink blotters, chalkboard erasers, paints and brushes, even some chisel carving implements.

Elsa was thoroughly impressed by the wide array of work tools as well as the wide ranging group of intellectual instruction manuals, and literary masterpieces such as classical legend Shakespeare, gothic writer Victor Hugo, rousing adventure novelist Alexandre Dumas and romantic Lord Byron's renowned poetry, that were all stored here as treasures.

There were also large amounts of early childish scribblings stacked in the overstuffed drawer of the work desk that had been fashioned from parts of an old, discarded bookshelf. Practice letters and numbers, Roman numerals included, on pages that showed the progress of the youthful user over time, were stored there, with precious cracked pieces of blackboard chalk neatly stacked in the makeshift desk's holder. Another flat length wooden rack on the desk was full of catalogued barks, forest leaves and pressed flowers; many academic awards and sports winning ribbons from Fattigskole school were adorning the hutch of the desk frame; along with the graduation diploma for Valedictorian with soaring marks from the Royal Søværnets Officersskole Naval Academy that had been placed on the highest shelf.

But one particular piece of paper, adhered to a thin wooden slab with a tack to the center rear of the ingenious desk, snatches Elsa's inquiring mind away from the nest of accumulated items on the shelving.

 **"Top Qualities Her Royal Highness, Princess Elsa May Desire in a Husband."**

Is what was to be read in precise, straight, bold print that an intermediary hand somewhere between child and adult scripted. The intrigued, blushing young woman's hand unconsciously flies to her throat, she so astounded by what she was reading.

After getting over the shock of seeing herself named here in this unexpected foray, Elsa continues to peruse a teenager Hans' written checklist for himself. In full intention to court and woo the Norwegian Royal Princess, two years his junior, to persuade her to accept when he offered his hand, Hans wished to make an electrifying impression by being the perfect specimen of a man.

Now reading these physical traits and character qualities firsthand, Elsa's eyes widen as they devour the many check-marked positive attributes that the young Prince had cited there as he matured over the years.

\- Humility with modesty  
-*Handsome pleasing features  
\- Military Naval man  
\- Good conversationalist  
\- Astute worldly debater  
\- Eloquent, commanding presence  
\- Inspiring motivational speaker  
\- Fine dramatic vocalist  
\- Accomplished dancer  
\- Well dressed debonair style/snappy dresser  
\- Skilled, urbane artist  
\- Sophisticated, suave charm  
\- Exceptional academic marks  
\- Toned physical stature  
\- All-around athlete (Marksmanship, archery, fencing, etc.)  
\- Versed in Romantic literature  
\- Fine handwriting  
\- Excellent equestrian  
\- Proficient pianist  
\- Dashing strong profile  
\- Exquisite manners and graces  
\- Refined posture and gentlemanly etiquette  
\- Self-possessed and capable Royal statesman  
\- Polished sideburns

 _*Does admitting the 2nd point negate the first quality?…hmm…I don't think so. Why deny the obvious?_ _Good looks? Born with it._

After reading the entire list, vain codicil included, Elsa involuntarily covers her mouth in that self-effacing, shy way she always did when bashful to a new situation she wasn't sure how to react to.

But her reddened cheeks soon begin to quiver with stifled giggles at the absurdity of it all, particularly the hastily scribbled addendum at the bottom. Elsa reexamines in amusement each of the nearly all checked off through the years, twenty or so high standards and grooming hoops that young Prince Hans set for himself to jump through– _and accomplished with flying colors, in my humble opinion_ \- with the hope in mind to impress her in order to sweep her off her feet when he presented himself before her.

"Oh, Hans! You were too funny a boy growing up." From the self listed characteristics of ' _Handsome pleasing features'_ , ' _Sophisticated, suave charm'_ , to the final entry of ' _Polished sideburns'_ the blonde woman murmurs under her breath at how silly, yet endearing the thought of a young man putting himself through all of these rigors to attain perfection in her eyes was, even starting years before he could ever dream of meeting her.

" _What I'd give, What I'd dare. Just to live one day out there… Beside my own Angel, my Juliet afar…Every thought I think is of her…All the man I must become is for her, my morning star…"_

"You did that all for me?" Elsa whispers, touched deeply, well beyond feeling flattered as her eyes read the last finely handwritten line on the base of that prominently hanging wish list page. "What happened…?" She muses bittersweetly, leaving the thought hanging in the air, until she pushed it away, with a dismissive gesture of her hand that couldn't help from folding up and pocketing the vaunted list.

Embarrassed, but unable to stop probing the mixed tales' poetic metaphors in admiration of his driven devotion, as she leafs through the written on pages and dusty covers, Elsa felt as if she were rummaging through someone's most private recesses of the soul.

And she wanted to find out more.

The platinum blonde young woman was so engrossed in fingering each overused, dogeared and stressed-spine tome, amidst reading papers and charcoal drawings scattered across the busy little boy's desk, that the guilty, still chuckling girl is quite startled to see a pair of familiar eyes gazing back at her when she looks up.

The Ice Queen cryokinetically moves a pile of thick hardcovers aside to see what was hiding behind them as another curtain is parted.

Disconcerted by the shadowy face staring back at her, as if she was looking into her own reflection in a mirror, Elsa raises her candle in the dim light to get a better look.

She gasps at what she sees.

The life-size sculpture of a young girl's face, with all the delicate features of her eyes, the soft texture of her nose and intricate curve of her lips, gives Elsa an indescribable tingling, followed by an exhilarated euphoria that the statue bust was created and dedicated in her honor.

Had Elsa not been so fond of the man already, she may have been concerned to see this and other artwork depicting herself adorning this lonely boy's secret lair.

Her cool pale cheeks burn with wonder at the amount of time and energy and genius young Hans Westergaard must've put into these works devoted to her visage. She was stunned by how he accurately imagined and depicted how she must look as she grew into a young woman, simply from the one daguerreotype he had seen of her as a small child.

Most of the illustrations were wispy and vague, more impressionistic than realistic—and far more breathtakingly lovely than modest Elsa would ever consider herself. The pictures and paintings and drawings were all so complimentary that the Norwegian Queen's face was currently red as a cherry with flattered embarrassment.

It must have taken years, as critical eyed artist Elsa herself could attest, for the increased talent from early child to adult that the images conveyed of both its creator and its singular subject.

Artwork of me?

 _'Every thought I think is of her…'_

The largest and most recent painting, Elsa could tell right away from the intricate attention to detail some of the earlier pictures lacked, was the one that took her breath away most of all.

It was a gorgeous full length profile of a young woman with a long blonde mane, wearing a pale blue dress that accentuated her regal beauty. The woman was standing on a snowy mountainside, utterly alone, awash in the moonlight of the night sky, looking back downwards with a lost expression of desolation and loneliness. The innocent young lady was gazing towards the distant horizon where, far off, a red-headed prince astride his golden fjord horse was riding towards her, with an open face full of longing and compassion.

 _Even then, you knew me…_

Other eyes that may have come upon this concealed refuge of youthful devotion may have considered it more on the lines of creepy obsession, but Elsa, knowing Prince Hans as she has come to, was only thrilled and exhilarated to realize that when she had been so lonely and so alone all those years, **he** had cared so much for her, with such devotion, for so long.

In this secret cove of boyish dreams that matured into a man's longing, hidden within the main castle, Elsa felt so very deliciously detached. It was as if here, she could be almost forgotten in the folds of the labyrinth maze, from where the rest of the household was bustling about below, going about their daily business and added celebratory duties unawares.

It appeared that young Hans Westergaard also enjoyed this refuge of forced solitude, where he spent many hours, unwanted by anyone. Here, the boy kept himself hidden away where he could expand his talents, enrich his mind, and dream of the girl with the haunting, expressive eyes, hidden, unseen, and unfazed by the ridiculing eyes of his family in his secret artist's chamber.

The bust sculpture of the little girl was so lifelike and well created that Elsa, for a split-second, thought it was a frozen-in-time version of herself that she had seen reflected so many youthful lonely years in the window of her own self-contained bedroom in Arendelle Castle.

Elsa, an artist herself who appreciated fine works, delicately strokes the stone cold features that somehow captured a human warmth within its creative beauty. This Princess Elsa statue's large lustrous eyes even seemed to be looking down upon a yellowed with age Good Book of the Bible that belonged to Hans' mother, now turned to a particular poignant verse on a certain page from the Song of Solomon:

 _"Who is this, arising like the dawn, as fair as the moon, as bright as the sun, as majestic as an army with billowing banners?"_ Song of Solomon 6:10

The Biblically inspired romantic poetry the boy had obviously associated with his fantasized girl of his dreams causes the real life version to shiver violently in the darkness as she realizes the extent of his long-awaited devotion.

And clearly written on the bottom of several of the pages was his own simple plea: _'Let someone want me someday.'_

The real Elsa, with tears in her eyes, looks down and sees that the sculptor had painstakingly mimicked the girl standing with her Papa and Mama and little sister from that newspaper clipping from so very long ago that Elsa herself had almost forgotten.

The multiple drawings placed on the wooden crate desk of this particular family scene were surrounded by smaller sculpted figurines of each family member.

King Agdar, Queen Idun, little princesses Elsa and Anna, had been so well done end precisely embellished with sculpt and paints that Elsa was thoroughly inspired to admire each of them. Especially the figurine of a thin and gangly youth with vibrant red hair who stood outside the distance away looking in on the happy family scene with a forlorn expression that plainly said:

' _Please God, that I might be part of a family like this...'_

"Oh, Hans… This is you, isn't it? Poor lonely, unloved boy…" Elsa murmurs at the unwanted outcast child's deepest wish to belong, scribbled in childlike handwriting on one cracked piece of blackboard slate beneath the sculpted figures.

 _You and I were both lonely growing up. But unlike me, hiding away from those who truly did love me, you had no one, did you?_

It appears that what little discarded and self-created items young Hans Westergaard had gathered in his entire lifetime as a boy had been ferreted here, behind the thick double wall of his unwelcoming castle's ancient hidden monk catacomb hideaway. Those catacombs were commonly found to be built into castles of the 15th century, for the purpose of concealing downtrodden, persecuted religious men of the cloth for heresy, prevalently accused of in the Dark Ages.

Hans, on what little time he spent in Egeskov, home of his birth that was never was a home to him, felt that this refuge from his tormenting big brothers and cold father was the only place he could find for himself in this kingdom's castle, obscured in its shadows.

"I do, Hans… I do want you…" In the dark solitude of this far off kingdom's hidden recesses, Elsa of Arendelle's once cold, closed, secretive heart openly, finally, admits to herself as her blossomed heart burns as brightly as the candle in her hand, with its brilliant un-flickering flame that she delicately breathes life into with just enough oxygen so as not to let the strong blaze of love go out.

"Please Lord, help me find Hans. And give me the strength and wisdom to show him that someone **can—** and **does** —love him with a true, meaningful love, as he has proven so many times in his selfless devotion for me." Elsa, upon hearing Daphne's frantic whispers and tramping up and down the steps, no doubt in search of her new disappeared friend, turned to leave the boy's solitary studios.

But not before she pauses with a sentimental smile at the childishly carved name plate on the ceiling above that she dusts off with her icy winds as she passes.

Glimmering in the dark from the corner of her eye, just as she was leaving, Elsa sees a half burnt up, handwritten letter peeking out from the old Luther Bible on the desk, and she carefully secures it into her bosom to read later as she goes.

Elsa follows the trail of Roman numerals backwards out of the confusing and dark winding stairs catacomb, traveling upwards until she was suddenly up in the attic servant quarters again. Shimmying out through the screen partition the mildly claustrophobic girl thought herself lucky to see the blessed sight of again, she dashes across the attic loft. Elsa guiltily dives into a small bed and flings herself down under the thin sheet she throws over her heavily breathing head.

"Elsie! Elsie! Oh where are you!? Elsie? Oh! You are in the bed! Didn't I just look there?! Silly me! My eyes must be playing tricks on me in all my excitement!" Daphne, full of energy, comes bounding across the room to bounce by Elsa's side of the bed to say:

"My lady has given me the afternoon off while she and several of the other wives of our kingdom's sons have been called to meet with the church sisters this afternoon for a Ladies Society Tea they prepared for a special visit from Mother Superior of the Abbey herself! And while they meet, we ladies' maids have been given some precious time off! Whoopee!" Daphne explains in a dyslexic manner for her flustered exhilaration.

"Ooh! It's been so long, almost a year! How he must've grown since last I was here! I'm so excited to see my… There is someone I'm dying for you to meet, Elsie! Maybe I'll bring him here, and none will be the wiser with all the festivities and cooking going on downstairs in preparation for the King's big birthday bash! Surely no one will know, if there's one more little mouth to feed, will they? He can stay at the bakery, I'm sure!" The lively plump woman bounces about the vaulted attic servants' quarters, readying her traveling bag close about herself and her new friend whirlwind of excitement.

"I knew we were going to have a nice lunch together… But here, have a warm cookie instead! I just fresh baked them specially! We can have a talk and eat as I change! You do like chocolate chip hazelnut fudge cookies, don't you, Elsie? You certainly can use the fattening up, you pretty, skinny little thing! And I need all the sugar energy I can get! Fattigskole school is not that short a walk away… Perhaps I can hitch a ride on the bakery truck if it's going that direction…Must hurry, or I'll be late to return home before dark. And little legs weren't made to be walking that far…" Her indecipherable, cryptic words and flitting about as she changed from her maid outfit into a more normal, plain, summery fashion for going into town, Daphne had Elsa's head spinning, not to mention her mouth stuffed full of fresh baked cookies.

"Fattigskole school…" Elsa's mind whirs at hearing the name of Hans' childhood primary education, according to his graduation papers and awards she had just read, minutes ago.

"Daphne, why don't you take my horse, Sitron? He's really sweet-tempered and a joy to ride. And then you don't have to walk all the way so you and your dear friend will be back here in no time, well before dark." Elsa generously offers services of her steed to her friendly new roommate.

"Oh! You have the heart of the pure angel, Elsie! That would be splendid! Lucas certainly will enjoy a ride on a real live horsie! Are you sure that Mr. Folmer won't mind? He's been left in charge in the stables since Master Rügen has been on leave. Ooh, I did not like him, that nasty piece of work!" Daphne scrunches her nose at the bad thought that went with the dark, cruel man.

"But you are so sweet to me! Here have another cookie." Deliberating whether the stiff necked Butler of Egeskov would permit her use of the borrowed horse as well, unaware that Sitron had one mistress alone, gregarious Daphne sticks another sweet treat into Elsa's trying to deny mouth. But the demure Queen merely smiles, her cheeks stuffed full of brown sugar and chocolate fudge goodness.

Elsa helps Daphne carry her bags of gifts and food down the long attic stairs to the ground floor and into the stables of the castle complex. After instructing Sitron to take likable Daphne to her destination (after Daphne fed the sweet toothed horse with the another one of her bountiful cookies from her endless basket) Elsa helps the plump young woman on to the golden horse's back.

"And while you're there… Could you perhaps ask the sisters of the convent if they have seen Prince Hans lately?" Elsa hesitantly invokes his name, trying her best to sound noncommittal, though her plaintive eyes spoke volumes to Daphne, who had her own share of experiences in the service of the handsome Princes of this Royal house.

"Prince Hans? You do know that poor boy had been disowned two years ago for something he did to the Queen of Norway, right, Elsie?" Daphne bites her lip, not tactful enough to know how to break the news to the other young woman, who obviously was sweet upon that handsome, yet unlucky rogue, the thirteenth-in-line Prince of Southern Isles.

"I had heard." Elsa answers evenly, unsure of how much she should unload onto Daphne 's already in a hurry shoulders.

"Just ask, for me, okay?" Elsa reiterates with a smile, touching her friend's shoulder lightly.

"I will. And I'll keep an eye out for him and a prayer in my heart for young Prince Hans, too, Elsie. Poor boy never did cut an even break with the way those other sons treated him. But at least he found a pretty, pure-hearted girl like you to believe in him and be on his side, Elsie, Sweetheart. That should help get him through this rough patch, for sure." Sympathetic Daphne smiles, glad she was not the only female to have forbidden affair of her own with a handsome Prince Charming.

As Elsa waves goodbye to Daphne, she takes a deep sigh and goes back to work at familiarizing herself with the small gathering of stable cows, if she was to ever call herself the 'milkmaid'. _Why did I do that to myself?_! Elsa had to at least produce one gathering of dairy product today.

"Hello. I'm your new milkmaid, girls." Disheartened when the trio of dairy cattle merely give the tall, platinum blonde a dismissive moo each, Elsa rolls up her sleeves, and grabs the nearby stool and a bucket.

"Let's get this done, ladies. And _please_ be pleasant and friendly cows like the one I milked with my sister up in the North mountain…" Elsa tries to smile, biting her lip though she cringes when she has to reach down to coax one of the female bovines' teat for milking.

Surprised at first by the stranger's cold fingers, the cows are soon soothed by the lovely voice in which the new milkmaid begins to sing them with a Norwegian lullaby.

' _Cows are musically inclined.'_ Anna had stated at the time when the merry girl started harmonizing away as she milked, producing better, thicker happy cream indeed from the swaying in tune cows.

 _"I'm waiting for my Prince, to sweep me off my feet. To take me in his arms…And fall for all my charms…Mhmm, mhmm… And no one else will do, no one can be as true. Or care as much for me…"_

So, with the song of her yearning heart spilling from her melodic lips, the sleepy-eyed beauty dreaming of her love who dreamt of her too, once upon a time, mimics her little sister's barn smarts as she milks. And the trio of bored milking cows contentedly sway and swish their long tails to the Ice Queen's music.

"I'll be with you in one minute, Marshmallow!" Elsa, after several minutes of her trying to glean at least half a pail-full between the three pleasant, yet not so forthcoming cows, hisses out over the stable door to where she was sure she saw something large and white moving nearby, just outside the closed stable gate.

Once Daphne had disappeared over the rise with Sitron, Elsa had intended to attend to Marshmallow where the large snow creature was successfully hiding as a big white hill that unassuming birdies landed and frolicked upon, behind a thick patch of trees on this side of the moat.

But these three dairy cows were being ornery in giving up their milk, despite her coaxing song, slowing Elsa down.

"Marshmallow? How quaint. I have been called by my conquests many tender names, but none as sugary sweet as a 'Marshmallow'. Although, I've been known to melt in a girl's mouth _**and**_ sweep girls off their feet, too, pale milk-maiden. May I be the first to have a taste of your freshly squeezed cream off the top?" The thin monotone voice with something akin to actual flirtation speaks to a startled Elsa, who stands up from her stool and backs away from the door as it creaks open.

"Conquest? What?! You can't even get that snobby Princess Eugenia to bat an eye at you! At least her little sister Maria **likes** **me**." The wheedlesome, high pitched sound comes from the crooked, weak chinned mouth of the oblong faced, shockingly blonde sticky-uppy haired young man who appears behind his other, badly attempted sideburns, dark-haired counterpart.

The reddish-brown man with a blotchy complexion had more comely features than his friend, but both young men had a proclivity to appear unrefined, gangly, and much younger than their 34 years of age in terms of rotten temperament and spoiled mannerisms.

"Yeah. Sure she likes you! Her father, the Czar is just forcing her to. She probably just feels sorry for how homely you are!" Twin tormentor Prince Rune slings back, already smarting from his recent tenderly bruised male ego for having his own engagement proposal to his betrothed Russian Princess currently on shaky ground, after trusting some shady shyster jeweler's half-off sale for a specialized fancy embossed gold, fine cut diamond engagement ring.

"HOMELY?! Why you dirty rotten #% #!" The blond with the unfocused eyes, that always seemed sleepy rather than alert, suddenly retorts as ill-tempered Prince Ruddi of the Southern Isles angrily springs to life to batter his twin brother, sending a sorry punch at Rune's red splotchy face.

The darker haired young man, who had at least been taking a stab at polite gentlemanly conversation, drops the façade and easily dodges and strikes back by twisting his rowdy partner's big bulbous nose.

While the twins start to wrestle on the stable floor, shouting insults, epitaphs and foul words quite unbecoming to princes of their class, affronted eared Elsa begins to quietly sneak away with her slaved over pail of milk.

And she would've gotten away from the warring twin brats, unnoticed, had one unlucky wretched cow not swished its tail to _ **Splat! splat! Bang!**_ on her clanging half-empty metal milk pail.

"And where are you sneaking off to, Missy? You still owe me that sip of cream!" Rune bitterly demands like a spoiled little kid when he catches sight of Elsa hightailing it out of the Ladegården stables' dairy section.

"Come on! Let's get her!" The argumentative twin terrors forgo their squabble mid-punch at the chance to give a rousing fox chase after this sprinting away black and white rabbit.

She dashes from the stable's side exit across the green like a young gazelle. Elsa, in a panic over control of her raging emotions and the ice that would soon be forthcoming, senses those pair of rascals were close on her tail as she dashes into the topiary tall hedge garden maze, where she ducks herself panting, to hide.

Her primly done up hair catches on some of the bramble bush branches, unfurling to reveal her long platinum length of tresses shining in the sunlight. Elsa restrains the ice forming at her fingertips, as she furrows deeper and deeper into the spiraling maze away from the pair of nasty bullies taunting her.

 _How dare these rascals call themselves royal princes? They are nothing like my chivalrous, noble Hans! And they don't look a thing like him, even if they are brothers! EvenEugeneis preferable…_ Elsa's traumatized, disgusted, wild, distracted thoughts and heavily breathing body pause to think quite proudly of her handsome dashing hero who was blessed with a thousand times attractive good looks' than his awkward, unsuitable siblings, especially this pair of twins closest to Hans' age. She was so agitated that she didn't even realize she had subconsciously called him 'hers.'

 _Huff Huff, I sincerely hope these two don't know their way around this hedge maze. Because I certainly don't…_

Elsa feels her tight heart tense up with ice crystals forming at her mouth's breath and on her frosted white arms' tensed muscles. _Keep it together Elsa, keep it together…_

But that's when she hears a low familiar roar slice his icy wrath across the placid summer countryside.

 _Oh no!_ Elsa ice lifts her crouching down in fear hiding frame up over the tall hedge maze's tall peaks to see what was going on the other side of the well trimmed animal shaped topiary.

"Marshmallow! NO!" But it was too late. The large, angry Snow Beast had felt his targeted, hunted down icy mistress' innate fear. Revealing himself, the blue, translucent spikes shooting up from his massive arms, legs and inflamed back were terrifying. The massive snow creature stands to his full growling and snarling thirty foot height with his icy fangs bared before Princes Ruddi and Rune's pursuant path, stopping them dead in their tracks even just as the fraternal twins were about to enter the topiary maze.

And the pair of overconfident, cocksure and cackling twin terrors both let out an equally effeminate, petrified dual screech as they sink to the ground in a double dead faint at the sudden sight of the awesomely petrifying monster of ice seething before them with his long icy claws flexing in their freaked out direction.

"Good job, Marsh – my Snow Beast." Peeking out to see Ruddi and Rune flattened to the ground like a pair of crumpled autumn leaves before her powerful creature, Elsa rightfully amends her title for her snowy creation, just as her sagacious Papa correctly suggested.

She, for once, was glad that her not so cute and cuddly, intimidating Snow Beast was at the ready to defend her from these unsightly scoundrels.

"Hmph. We showed them how not to treat a Lady in such a crude manner, didn't we, my Snow Beast?" Elsa emerges from the hedge maze triumphantly, strutting back across the green with her hands on her sassy swaying hips, right past the pair of those unconscious wimps' bodies.

"Now, you go and hide behind that thick grove of trees like you were before, on the other side of the moat this time, as not to call more attention, should these two have the audacity to tell why they—ahem—to borrow some unsophisticated language from those serials Anna reads, in their crass vernacular— ' _wet their pants'._

"Now, I've have a castle's second and third floor to investigate before we can leave this thoroughly inhospitable kingdom." Instead of being shaken up and demoralized, or scared enough to shrivel away, as the sheltered, shy young girl may have done once upon a time, Queen Elsa of Arendelle picks up her frozen over pail of milk in stride and takes a deep breath before letting out a determined sigh.

She was going to prove to the world that, even though she still had the tender pure heart of a maiden, she also held the ice hardened deep soul of a powerful monarch.

An Ice Queen who knew what she wanted now and would surpass all odds to kick down every door it took to find and bring back home the lonely boy she had, against all obstacles, fallen in love with.

And then she would tell her Prince that he was _**wanted**_ at last, and that he _**belonged**_ in the embrace of her welcoming arms…

* * *

 _Royal Søværnets Officersskole_ – Royal Danish Naval Academy

 _tout de suite – 'At once'_ in French

* * *

 _RR-ooaarr!_

Elsa is certainly brave and bold to enter 'Into the Lion's Den' of Egeskov Castle! And what a set of ferocious big cats they are! We're starting to bump into some of Hans' big brothers there on the kingdom of the Southern Isles estate...And what jewels Princes Didrik, Rune and Ruddi are!

3 down, 9 to go... _Elsa beware..._

By the way, Did any of you notice the origin of some of young outcast Hans' scribbled verses that Elsa found?

 _'What I'd give, What I'd dare. Just to live one day out there' was_ directly from the Disney song "Out There" from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" based on the Victor Hugo 1831 French gothic novel of another unwanted boy sentenced to live his life on the inside looking out.

Are there no limits to that Hans' talents? And he's got an admirable quality checklist to boot! (That our curious Elsa currently has in her pocket's possession ^_*) Swordsmanship, naval prowess, singing, scholarly subjects of all varieties, and now artistic in paint and drawing and sculpting too! Boy, Elsa! Our Hans-some Prince is quite a genius catch, and has been longing for you, wanting to be part of your family almost all his life…

And did you all catch Elsa singing " _'_ I'm waiting for my Prince" to the cows? Guess which Disney Princess sang that, for extra credit. (she's Setsuna's other favorite Disney gal! ^_^)

FYI, Egeskov's cook and scullery maid have a striking resemblence to 'Downton Abbey's' Mrs. Patmore and Daisy.

Please review this intriguing turn of events and our ambitious and determined Ice Queen's first meeting with some of Hans' not so delectable brothers in exciting Egeskov , all in a daring search to find her man! Who ever imagined shy, regal Queen Elsa would ever pretend to be a lowly maid?! Did you enjoy this intriguing turn of events? ^_^

So, what's in store next for our intrepid heroine who's not only waiting for her prince - she's in hot pursuit of handsome Prince Hans Westergaard! Methinks his appearance in the kingdom of his birth, the Southern Isles of Denmark, is imminent...

Perchance to wonder, what ice and fireworks will happen when Helsa's eyes meet again...?! ^-*

Thanks for reading!

God bless!

HarukaKou


	10. Chapter 10 - Inheritance

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 10**

 **"Inheritance"**

Flynn Rider shakes himself awake. Once again, the thief finds his handsome person in a dark, dank, smelly pit of a prison holding cell with another unconscious beaten and battered man splattered atop him.

Just the kind of place he _loved_ waking up in the morning to.

 _Actually, my preferred morning spot is to be wrapped in the soft folds of my loving little wife's warm supple body… Damn! When I get out of this mess, I'll make it my New Year's resolution to never have any sleeping companion other than my Blondie again._

Flynn makes a sour face at his current undesirable situation as he wriggles out from beneath a moaning Big Nose's pop. The old codger's flailed out gangly form had been cruelly tossed in the same ship prison cell to carelessly flop on top of Flynn, like so much rubbish.

 _Ewgh! Conversely, it is not nice to wake up under a pile of smelly, sweaty old man!_

In the stifling summer noonday heat, felt even way down here in the Sjette Doight clipper ship's cargo hold, Eugene laments, unsure if the crimson blood dried on his cheek was even his own. He glanced over at the grossly beat-up and battered old man whose arms were sticking out at weird angles every which way.

In the dim light, he could make out the blood caked silhouette of a man limply hung up on the iron bars of the cage. "Oh, no no no no…" Flynn grunts, blinking his horror-struck eyes as he attempts to raise his aching, bruised body to its feet, only to find them bound to shackles to the middle of the cell floor.

It was Hans. The poor guy was dangling by chains from his wrists and arms and ankles to be cruelly suspended against the cage bars. From the lack of blood in his drained pallid white arms, Eugene judged that Hans must've been hanging there since the three of them had been recaptured by that rotgut Master Rügen and his hefty henchman when the brothers had been stopped in their escape to fetch unlucky Aged P.

 _Hmph! Don't bail on me now, Sideburns! You've got some seriously demented past acquaintances, Kid! I thought my illustrious backstory had enough sordid characters in it for both of us! That Count Rügen guy is one bad ass! What did you do to deserve that psychopath's wrath?_

Eugene muses as he mentally pushes to prop himself up, mandatory shackles and roped hands behind his back and all, with a pained smirk at the bruises to his – _I'd put money on it_ – cracked ribs.

 _That jerk's rifle butt was damn merciless!_

"Thank God you're still breathing, Handsome! Don't scare me like that, Kid!" Going serious as he reaches his constrained self as far as he could be able to, at least, reach his ear to rest against Hans' leg thigh, where the main blood vessel of the great saphenous vein was still pumping.

His kooky chatterbox cover had been holding out for the hope that his kid brother's almost totally motionless body, that was sagging eerily above Flynn's own tied and shackled down to the floor form, was yet alive and kicking.

With a deep sigh, Flynn Rider sets to work at his lock picking trade once again with a bent nail he pried out of a floorboard nearby. He would not let the sickening bilge smells and wave tossed sea vessel's swaying get to him. The lone conscious thief's mind races, in time with his sore fingers, on how to get the trio of them out of this fine mess.

 ** _Minutes later…_**

 _"_ Ahhh! Ay-yah-yah! Yeesh! Did anyone get the license plate number of that wagon plow? I think I've been run over. What a crick in the neck! Hey, is that kid okay?" Aged P, only his hands in irons, whines as he comes to about twenty minutes after Eugene had pushed his sprawled out decrepit old form from its smothering position atop him.

"Yeah, for now. How did they get you on this boat, old man? And why?" The nimble fingered thief finishes unlocking one half of his own wrist cuffs that kept him pinned like a four legged animal to the ground. Flynn idly asks. as he lurches on his knees as far as he could reach and rifles feverish fingers through Hans' pants' pocket in search of –

"Aha! Come to Papa, my shiny little baby!" His own trusty set of thieving lockpicks had been obviously confiscated from his unconscious person by those thugs.

 _I am_ _ **suing**_ _for physical reimbursement, plus mental cruelty damage as soon as I get word to my attorney back home._

Eugene recalled Hans and his silver nib pen that was ' _mightier than the sword',_ he figured that those cretins wouldn't do such a thorough search of the redhead royal who was not necessarily identified as a common thief.

– _add aggravated assault and harassment to my list of criminal complaints. Oww, some vital body parts are going to smart for a week._

Eugene takes that silver nib pen and starts to seriously go to work on his remaining shackles and handcuffs. But it was still tough to work on himself in such a twisted position, even if he was a master thief.

In between giving his sore fingers a break from the old rusty lock, Eugene was periodically trying to nudge Hans awake at his limp foot, but the flaccid kid wasn't responding.

 _Boy, am I gonna give you a tanning, Lillebror, for being so damn reckless! Wake up already!_ Eugene tries to laugh it off, though was starting to freak out that those guys might have done a real number on the Danish Prince.

"So, spill, Aged P." Busy at his trade, and multitask worthy enough to ask for some mission clarification, Eugene directs his frustration out towards the dithering old geezer who was using his jeweler's eyepiece (that seemed to be surgically attached to his squinty ancient eye) to inspect some rather large rats that were crawling across the bilge hold planks just outside the cage, cackling at the men trapped inside it.

"My daughters and I were just heading back on the road after the wedding when I had to make a stop in the words. At my time of age, nature is constantly a-calling. You'll see someday, you young whippersnapper! So don't ridicule. And the next thing I knew, without so much as a how-do-you-do, I was grabbed and bagged and thrown into a cart, rolling around like the last matzo ball in a pot of chicken soup." Aged P explains his earlier capture to Flynn, who had been focused on poking Hans awake and trying to pick at his own jammed padlock, all while keeping a conversation with Aged P, so as to not totally lose it.

"Now there's a happy visual put on the simmer to take with me. So, what's all this about? You didn't happen to do a song and dance job on this Count Rügen in one of your 'extraordinary, rare, one-of-a-kind custom jewelry shop shenanigans', did you, Aged P?" Flynn Rider was well acquainted with rare jewel brilliants and some extraordinary shenanigans in his twenty-six year stint as a master thief, before he met a certain green-eyed, life-altering Blondie beauty.

Big Nose's family business, while indeed turning out the finest, highest quality gold and silver jewelry of the first water, wasn't always exactly 100% on the straight and narrow. Although, as Eugene could attest from all the time he was conscripted to go to the forest path tavern with his bleeding heart bride, Big Nose himself was a thoroughly reformed crook since he and the other Snuggly Duckling thugs too met the sweet reforming influence of good and trusting Princess Rapunzel.

And Eugene Fitzherbert understood the power of her special reformation power very intimately well indeed.

Very intimately.

As Aged P looks away guiltily, quite caught-with-his-pants-down, the stubbly former criminal, for half a dreamy second in his wandering thoughts of his wife, imagined that his tender stroking of Hans' limp lower leg, was for his own lady love, until the passed out redhead above speaks blearily.

"Snowflake…" Hans murmurs Elsa's fond diminutive once again as his green eyes start to flutter open.

"Don't call me that, Sideburns! People might get the wrong idea! Sheesh! I'm just checking for your pulse!" Embarrassed as any red blooded male would be, Flynn, though relieved his little brother had not been totally knocked brain-dead by that villain's harsh head blow with the back handle of his brass sword, pulls away so quickly that Hans already punished head smacks against the cold cage bars as a result.

"Ouch." Hans wakes up fully now, his dazed mind swirling anew with the jolted bump as he looks around promptly. The taste of blood in his mouth was quite unpleasant as he readjusts his bothered jaw and licks at his still swelled split-lip with a cringed face.

The young man assesses his blood drained, dead weight unfeeling arms and his renewed bondage and chained ankles that kept him affixed above the ground to the cage bars.

"Which of the twin princes of the Southern Isles were you engaged to create a promissory wedding band for, Sir? Prince Ruddi or Prince Rune?" Refusing to give in to confined defeat as his clouded mind regains awareness, Hans considers all the facts that he already had gleaned on this unexpected venture concerning the reasons for Big Nose's abduction and consequently his Aged P father's internment.

Between dribs and drabs of information he had heard spoken from Big Nose and the pleading of his confused new bride Hilde, Hans had extrapolated that an engagement ring was the commodity in question. Judging from Master Rügen's self-righteous livid anger and this elderly gentleman's shifty eyes when confronted, Hans knew that he was correct.

So the simple process of elimination made it apparent which of his remaining unmarried siblings could be involved, according to this young genius' swift deductions.

"How in the world did you figure out the name of my client – Prince Rune – _elem_? Your Kid brother is a smart cookie, Thief! And a snappy dresser, too. May I say, how I admire your grey cloak ensemble immensely, young gentleman. A garment this stylish deserves to be accessorized! A 24 carat gold precious metal pocket watch would be just the ticket for every well-dressed young naval officer." The wise old Prussian jeweler never missed an opportunity to hawk his goods, especially to a rich, high society looking mensch whose high class lingo and deportment screamed ' _important Navy man'_ '.

"Put the sales pitch away, oldtimer. We're not buying." Eugene dismissively answers for his kid brother to the commercialized gold, silver and gemstones savvy businessman. "What kind of schmaltz did you pull on those suckers to deserve this serious take down of you, your son, and consequently us?" Flynn's skeptical eyes give the crooked old man with the great big schnauz a disbelieving, incredulous look.

"Well… Now that you ask… I had been slaving over producing the perfect gold and silver etched oh-so delicate engagement ring when my old eyes had accidentally – _accidentally,_ _mind you_ – slipped in a slightly, very moderately, by the Tavernier's rule of gemstones for dear Prince Rune – maybe a little less than a first water highest quality and clarity stone. But set amid so many stunning rubies and sapphires and amethysts, the ring was such a thing of beauty that no one would've been the wiser—had that hoity-toity Russian Princess that he counted himself hitched to, not been some kind of crazy fine diamond expert as a hobby. What kind of self-respecting young lady would have a crazy hobby of checking the purity of gems as one of her feminine accomplishments? I ask you!" Here, Aged P throws his animated hands up in the air in pure frustration at the iniquities of the world on whole that was against him.

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Let me get this straight. You passed on a flawed diamond, set in some fancy engagement ring for some snobby Russkie Princess? Let me guess. She's in such emotional anguish with her poor broken heart insulted, that she's practically declared war on her loverboy, right?" Eugene's quirky eyebrow lifts up drolly, he a worldly man who understood that diamonds were a girl's best friend, after all.

 _I guess that's why the shiny clear baubles never did really like me…_

"Anyways, the silly boy got the ring tossed back in his face for ' _offending her delicate sensibilities'._ And then, she told her Pappy, the Czar of Russia – Ay yah-yah! - all about it and he said to break off the engagement. So, if Prince Rune can't explain it by his Father's birthday celebration what happened properly to her and her angry parent who are attending the shindig, he will be an ex-fiancé, faster than you can say ' _chutzpah'_. Guess that's where I come in, to elucidate and clear things up to the girl. There was no need for my Nostrodamas and I to be dragged in by that jerk of a crackpot stooge so we could be put on some kind of kangaroo court trial or disclosure of wrongdoing hearing. They could have just asked for a refund if they didn't like the end results. Who knew a little innocent slip-up of my jewelers tongs in mistake would cause this much nuisance?!" The old school shyster says with unapologetic shrugged shoulders.

"Great. I love attending court trials. Seeing the justice system at work. Unless, of course, I'm the defendant. Anyway, it sounds like a really swell family gathering we've been invited to as **guests** of honor for your Father's **_– our_** **** _Father's_ – special B'day, Good-lookin."" Eugene comments, trying to put a light mood spin on the serious course of events that would lead them to the Southern Isles Castle of Egeskov.

"Justice in the Southern Isles is fierce and unforgiving, with long drawn-out sentences, if not swift, harsh punishment, Storbror. I sympathize with the misfortune of your oversight gaffe, sir. Although, I am by no means, a proper solicitor for your advocacy, especially in the sight of this kingdom that I have myself been expelled from, I will try to speak on your behalf for leniency." Ignoring Eugene's levity, Hans says gravely, already imagining his mocking brothers' and unsympathetic father's rejoinder to this pitiless application.

But the good heart in Hans would have to make an attempt, no matter how agonizing, for his new friend's sake.

 _'Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God_.' Hebrews 13:16

"Then, it's Rune whom Master Rügen is representing." As the wheels were turning in his head, Hans starts to struggle at his chains.

"Give it up, Handsome. I've been at it for hours. I even tried your handy-dandy little 'mighty sword'." Eugene displays before Hans his purloined silver nib pen that was not even beginning to scratch the surface of the multiple locks around dejected Flynn's ankles. "Those Dummkopf idiots put locks on the locks around both of our shackles and kept us just far away enough from each other to do any fancy cooperative maneuvering. I guess they mean for us to stay put this time, unfortunately." Eugene miserably hangs his crestfallen head as he gazes to the ground forlornly at his double shackles.

"Remind me later to pat you on the back for your strength of optimism in adversity, Storbror." Hans swollen mouth curls into a smirk at Eugene's defeatist attitude. "But for now, my hands are tied." The redhaired Prince intones with a bit of saucy superciliousness, wriggling his indomitable wrists and capable fingers that should have been lifeless for the loss of blood flow all these hours. But he, for one, would never give into pessimism as long as he knew God was in control.

Hans' swelled lip juts out as he looks down at where his big brother had already given up the struggle. Flynn Rider, his tool ineffective on his overwhelming bondages had flopped down as best he could with his twisted shackled wrists and legs, flat on the dirty ground hugging his knees close in a fetal position.

"Just _remind me_ to kick you in those skinny pants for having such methodically scrupulous villains for past pals, and a royal flush house full of vindictive older brothers you dragged me into the crazy family tree thereof." Eugene retorts with a simper of his own, sitting up and going back with new panache to his lock picking pastime again, with renewed belligerence and insult motivated vigor.

"Argh! It's all your fault, Lillebror." In the mood to blame Hans for everything and anything, Eugene bangs his knuckles against the impossible, frustrating shackles that no amount of anger mis-managed smashing could budge the latch pins of.

But at least now he was trying.

"I know. That's what everyone always says." With the vivid recollection of brothers and Father accusatory stares and phrases that he ruined their happy family life by being born, Hans responds to Eugene's blame game with a sighed smile, accustomed to shouldering blame he was unwittingly the cause of.

"I bet you boys were the best of brothers growing up." With a languorous smile, Aged P remarks at the contentious scene of brother versus brother bantering back and forth, totally ignorant of their unfamiliar childhoods, nor the fact that they just met one another one short month ago.

Giving one another incredulous stares, as the two handsome young men each pause to glare up from their difficult enterprises, Hans and Eugene both break into chortles at the absurdity of it all.

Now, Eugene didn't have much of a choice, Hans was the first glimpse of a sibling he ever had.

But as for Hans, with a plethora of brothers to compare Eugene to, this half brother whom he could work so cohesively with, speak so openly and honestly with, good-naturedly teasing or sincerely challenging without thought of malicious reprise, was the one he had become the closest to, in the short life-changing month of getting to know one another.

"So, Lillebror. Tell me a story. A fun bedtime story about ' _the twins'_. The way you said that word as if it made you feel sick, it made them sound so ominous and terrible. Heck! Tell me all about all dozen of our big brothers' finer points, since it seems we've got all the time in the world to shoot the breeze together before we meet those fellas. Because I have a feeling that we're on a one way ticket to your palatial estate that I had the birds eye view of earlier, on the way in, Handsome. Therefore, don't you think I had better get some introductions to the supporting cast there, if we are going to figure out how to outfox the lot of them – _ahem_ – I mean _negotiate_ this sticky situation for our sticky fingered Aged P over here, before he starts an international incident?" Eugene asks, already imagining what his reception would be like in such a toxic environment, and not enjoying the sentiment of it at all.

 _If they called Hans 'unwanted', what juicy name would I engender? As if I don't know what they would call this wrong side of the sheets brother-from-another-mother…_

"Where do I begin?" Hans lifts his indefatigable chin high, despite his excruciating, dire circumstances. "Ah, yes. Have either of you ever heard the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors? Although I, by no means, compare myself to that great Bible hero, I always did feel an affinity with my favorite Old Testament story friend as a singled out child growing up." With the modest disclaimer, Hans decides to begin his past childhood tale with the oddly similar Biblical analogy that entailed competitive, rival brothers, each vying for their father's attention and blessing to the point of doing harm to one another. The only thing was that, unlike the dreamer Joseph's father Jacob, Hans' patriarch certainly did not prefer him as the young chosen boy in the story was cherished and prized.

 _My Father disowned me…_ The bitter feeling any boy would abhor, between father and son, still cut like a knife.

Eugene and Aged P sit up as best they could in the cramped ship prison cell to listen with rapt attention to the oratorical eloquence of the young man hanging on the cage bars. It was as if consummate performer in Hans was in his element on this humble stage as he goes through the retelling, transporting his audience to another time and place and into his sorrowful past…

* * *

 ** _Meanwhile in Egeskov Chapel…_**

The single spire tall steeple holy building had been built across the moat and close to the shoreline overlooking the imposing castle and its outlying stable complex. So many people going in and out of the Egeskov Chapel gave it the most hustle and bustle the not-so-often-visited establishment had seen in many a year's time.

"It is so very nice to meet you, Princess Rapunzel."

"It's wonderful see you, Princess Rapunzel. I've heard so much about you."

"I am so glad to make your acquaintance, Princess Rapunzel."

"How splendid we finally meet, dear Princess Rapunzel!"

Accustomed to letting her dear mother Queen Arianna do most, if not all, of the royal greetings to any visitors in Corona, Rapunzel was at first bit shy to be the center of attention here. But after Mother Superior left for the big house to greet the King, nervous Rapunzel was beyond terrified.

Her full tummy was in knots to be left alone to fend for herself with these intimidating strangers, and the brown haired cutie certainly was glad when they all converged on her with appropriate smiles and over polite welcomes by the growing gaggle of well-bred royal women. They each do their duty in meeting with the visiting Prussian Princess at the urgent request of kindly Sister Clarice Angelika.

A stately older woman with a dark russet and gray streaks named Princess Emma of Sussex, first son Prince Kaleb's wife, as the eldest, most likely to be the future Queen of Denmark in her husband's hereditary primogeniture succession to the Danish crown, was the most regal lady in charge.

And it showed. The 46-year-old British woman, in a modest, deep turquoise empire waist velvet dress, was old enough to be 25-year-old Rapunzel's mother. Princess Emma even reminded the bright eyed girl of her mother Queen Arianna a great deal in both stature and deportment. But Princess Emma was just as noble and majestic as her mom, and kind-eyed enough to treat the visiting Princess as an equal.

"As members in good standing at this kingdom, may we welcome your presence in Egeskov, your Royal Highness, Princess Rapunzel of Corona." With a lovely curtsy, Princess Emma had led her sisters-in-law, Frederika of Radziwill, second in line son Anders' Polish royal wife, lovely Isabelle if Italy, third in line Lars' wife, and graceful, poised Elisabeth of Belgian, fifth in line Mattias' wife, to meet with the visiting Princess after Mother Superior had escorted Rapunzel here from the Castle.

"I am Princess Emma of Sussex. And these are Princesses Frederika of Radziwill, Isabelle of Italy, Elisabeth of Belgium, and Marguerite of Orleans. Marguerite? Where has she disappeared off to now?" Unpretentious Emma's deep brown, grey-streaked hair in a no-nonsense tight up bun with wisps of locks on the sides was in stark contrast to stunning Isabelle's long blonde sausage curls, pretty Elisabeth's golden tan perfectly framed marcelled tresses in a younger stylish modern wave curl do. And all three were even more differentiated from sober Princess Frederika's mousy brown, flower decorated, double ringlet side pigtails.

Rapunzel, feeling only the slightest bit out of place with her youthful and wild, not-so-elegant super short cropped cocoa brown spiky hair amongst these elegant older ladies, follows their quizzical gazes to where a piled low tawny blonde hair in a chignon, beautiful woman with large sad doe eyes had been kneeling at the front altar in solemn prayer.

"She is at it again, Ladies. I do think she just lost another one." A coquettishly whispered voice enters the fray from somewhere behind where the group was standing near the front entrance chapel nave.

"Olá, Princess Rapunzel. I am Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal, eighth in line Prince Peiter's wife." A busty woman with a lavishly braided tall twist bun comes bouncing up from behind the quartet of women. "I have been dying to meet you, Princess! I have heard all about your exciting story! Just like a storybook! A baby-snatching witch who locked you up for 18 years in a tower for your magical, revitalizing seventy foot long golden hair; a tall, handsome thief who climbed the tower and ravished - oh I mean! - _rescued_ you from your captivity. And you actually were allowed to bring him home to your kingdom and marry your own chosen dashing Prince consort! Oh, it is so thrilling a fairytale! Almost too good to be true! Is your thief as charming and handsome a rogue as they say he is? I am so jealous of you, Princess! Ooh! I wish you brought your bad boy _Flynn Rider_ here for us to meet!" The big boned Portuguese woman with the dark black-haired center parted shining hair up in a tall bun was certainly vivacious as she hugs a chubby arm around Rapunzel's skinny shoulders.

"Gloria, decorum, please. Please don't overwhelm our visitor with your flights of fancy." Princess Frederika of Radziwill admonishes her bubbly younger sister in law as she adjusts her dark brown ringlet curled side ponytails in feigned humility.

"No, it's fine really. I don't mind. I'd love to talk about everything with you all later. But thank you for caring, Princess Amalia." Rapunzel pats the plain Princess on the back of her hand with a benevolent smile.

"Greetings, Princess Rapunzel. I am Adelaide of Austria, seventh in line Prince Jurgen's wife." The serious and austere Princess of Austria simply states. The elegant woman was born in Milan to an Italian Mother and Austrian father, and the Italian half of her royal parentage dominated her noble features. Strict Adelaide's darkest sepia loose hair was drawn up into a winged chignon bun that made her quite the stand-out beauty of the crowd, though her cool demeanor was forbidding.

"Hello. I am Princess Amalia of the Netherlands, tenth in line Prince Franz's wife. Nice to meet you." Sedate, although appearing as if she wished to say more, Princess Amalia of the Netherlands bows her head to Rapunzel. The browbeaten woman who feared her large muscled, brutish husband's reprimand, straightens the large dull brownish winged hair on either side of her coiffed head, then fixes the lace trimmed on her lavender off shoulder dress as if she were nervous or self-conscious. Twenty-one year old Amalia knew she was not pretty like poised Elisabeth, nor engaging as boisterous Gloria Lujza, but the quiet young woman made Rapunzel feel quite at ease.

Rapunzel gives the small framed mousy girl, who was a few years younger than herself, an encouraging smile as the Prussian Princess casually brushed her hand through her wild and loose shock of cocoa brown hair that had fallen into her face. Then a dreamy look crosses Rapunzel's face as she recalls how it was her Eugene who first sheared it off into this chic style like a professional barber, and how he had stated that he preferred his 'Brownie' this way ever since.

"May I be the first to say that I do adore your modern hairdo! I wish I had your hair, but I'm sure my Franz would not approve." Princess Amalia compliments the visiting royal with a touch of envy at how easily Rapunzel got away with that short style, looking so lovely without a trace of the winged style glamour that the Princess of Netherlands herself tried to please her own stern and exacting husband with. "It is so very, very…" Never so eloquent, the sweetly round-faced younger woman searches for the proper words to apply.

"Odd." Societal sophisticate Princess Antonia of Spain, the wife of sixth in line Prince Didrik, cuts to the core with her sudden cold words. Nodding to Rapunzel appropriately, her shining dark brunette hair glistens beneath that filmy white ostrich feather veil that shivers atop her ostentatious head as it shakes. Her piercing eyes were full of disapproval on her staid features as the drawn-faced woman looks down her long nose at the Prussian Princess with something close to scorn. Without a second word, Princess Isabelle turns away to walk through the chapel aisles with her long white fox fur stole trailing behind her as she goes.

"Don't listen to her. Antoinetta's always stomping around in a bad mood. Just because she can only have daughters – she has _five_ of them already - when her husband so desperately wants a son. In fact, they all want sons! My Prince, too! Maybe I'll be the lucky one, but the traveling carnival fortuneteller was sure this would be girl." Fortunately, Princess Hermine of Waldeck, the young wife of ninth in line Prince Berte, was about Rapunzel's age, and sympathized with her, with a familiar hand squeeze as she pats her full with child stomach lightly.

The pregnant blonde's high piled curls were twisted not so neatly atop her head, where a dainty white flower spray had been attached to a comb. The yellow blonde's twisted ringlets cascaded at the nape of her neck in a messy knot that made Rapunzel warm up to her immediately.

"I'm Berte's wife, Hermine. The others think I'm dumb, because I'm the youngest among us so far, and a little sieve-headed. But I know why Antoinetta's continually cross. And I don't half blame her." The cute button nosed blonde in the flowery dress of pale pink lace confides in Rapunzel behind the fan that she was incessantly blowing over her face and messy hairdo.

"My! Aren't there a lot of us to meet!? And if those two last twin Princes play their cards right this weekend… There may be two more to add to our merry group of Westergaard brides soon enough!" Sweet Stephanie was excitable to meet new faces, and quickly changes the subject when the three oldest wives converge around Rapunzel to collect her to the tea table.

"Right. Okay. What I've been meaning to ask..." Mumbling Rapunzel bites her lip at all the emotional intrigue going on in this populated royal house, behind the scenes. This entire male dominated idea of importance put on succession in line of a kingdom was beyond her. She knew that, in Corona, whatever style of hair or dress she chose for herself to wear, if she had a dozen other brothers or sisters vying for attention, or whether her baby should be a girl or boy, her loving parents would be supportive and welcome either sex of her child. They had, since the family's reunion almost seven years ago, let Rapunzel be free and artistic to do whatever she liked, including marrying a non-socially picked out commoner man of her dreams. The keys to the kingdom of Prussia's inheritance were assured to be hers and her chosen mate's already, whether or not she was a boy, and whether or not she gave birth to a son or daughter.

But it appeared that Denmark was a different place than Prussia entirely.

 _Enough of the mumbling! Buck up, and say what you mean, Rapunzel_!

After giving herself a berating / pep talk, Rapunzel gives the married princesses of this foreign kingdom before her a congenially warm smile. Then she takes a deep breath before speaking.

"Thank you all for meeting me at such short notice. You really are so kind to invite me to meet here for this lovely tea in this beautiful chapel." The Corona Princess gazes from face-to-face, even to the indifferent haughty ones. Each seemed interested in degrees to hear what this girl who came under the wing of respected Holy Sister Clarice Angelika had to say that was so urgently important.

Rapunzel hesitantly, with trepidation, glances down to where a pinkish Pascal was giving her thumbs-up from inside of her big mauve-pink skirt pocket.

Her eyes on the way up, glance at the thin figured, severely dressed in black, tightly pulled back tawny haired woman who had been devoutly kneeling in prayer at the other end of the church wrapped in darkness, right down to the black lace veil that covered her face.

"No dear! It has been our pleasure!" Personable Princess Elisabeth of Belgium smiled prettily at Rapunzel.

"Besides, it gives us an excuse to have the tea party, blessed by the Sisters, without our husbands breathing down our throats for a whole lovely afternoon!" Princess Hermine stuffs a cookie in her mouth as she shakes her messy hair of yellow blonde with those cascading barley curls in the back giddily.

"Oh! I didn't notice before! You're having a baby, too!" Hermine boldly touches Rapunzel's starting to bulge stomach in glee. "Now I have someone to talk baby talk to! And I won't be shushed this time because _some of us_ are just beyond childbearing age, and too stubborn to admit she knows nothing about motherhood." Still in her late twenties and rash enough to show it, Hermine had been holding back her gushing over her expectant status as she lowers her voice behind her fan conspiringly with Rapunzel. Her blue eyes sneak over insinuatingly towards where her sister-in-law Princess Marguerite was praying fervently on her rosary several pews, doing her best to drown them out with Hail Mary's.

 _"_ I'm sure you don't have to bear a child yourself to know that a mother's love is a precious thing, blessed from Heaven. We must count ourselves lucky to have the chance to experience it at least once in a lifetime _."_ Her own past with Gothel gave her a crash course on how _not_ to act selfishly as a mother, as Rapunzel speaks with sage wisdom and a smile at the silly girlish cousin's giggles. But her eyes were becoming more and more interested in that dark veiled Princess from France in the far corner of the church who seemed to be in some emotional torment, though, none of the other nine wives of the Danish Princes appeared to be concerned.

So Rapunzel takes another deep breath and plunges in at being sociable at the tea party section of the chapel where the nuns had set up at a table with tea and crumpets and cakes and scones and the like.

"Hello. Why I am actually here is to ask if –" Rapunzel ever so quietly begins to ask, but the moment soon passes when the door of the chapel cracks open and Mother Superior arrives.

 ** _CLAP. CLAP. CLAP. CLAP._**

"Now I believe we are all assembled, and have had proper introductions with our guest.

So, shall we enjoy the lavish offerings of tea and sweet treats that the generous sisters of this chapel have laid out for us in our Prioress' visitation honor?" Unaware that Rapunzel was interrupted in speaking, Princess Emma motions to the others as she reverently joined Mother Superior, Sister Clarice Angelika, in the Chapel entrance vestibule where second in line proper Princess Fredirika had insisted on patiently waiting to attend the dignified Abbess of the diocese upon her return.

After a few minutes full of greetings and salutations to the Mother Superior, the elderly nun joins Rapunzel near the refreshment table.

"Did you ask the ladies your question yet, Princess Rapunzel?" The aged, more direct to the point Mother Superior plainly asked the Prussian Princess amidst all the polite niceties _._

 _When you get to be my age, the good Lord may not give you much time left for dilly-dallying about!_

"Um… Not yet." Rapunzel's hesitant smile and guilty scrunched nose told Sister Clarice that the timid, not so assertive child had not.

"Well, now's your chance, Dearie. Ladies!" _Clap! Clap!_ "Princess Rapunzel has a question to ask you in her search for some important truths." The blunt old woman in the black and white habit interrupts the ten gathered Princesses plus Rapunzel, herself, and a few of the local nuns serving tea and cakes during this bustling noisy affair.

"Ahem… Ummm. Do any of you have any clue, by chance… It's really important that I know… Have any of you… By any chance…" A lump in her throat to be addressing such a crowd of feminine eyes all looking at her with intense curiosity, Rapunzel remembers why she was here in the first place.

To find out if Eugene made it, getting Hans help here, after the pair of brothers left that ship when Hans stubbornly refused to let Elsa see him so fatally injured.

"… Has anyone seen or heard anything, or know where I can find anything about the whereabouts of, _gulp,_ Prince Hans of the Southern Isles?" As Rapunzel scans the entire crowd with eager eyes, the regal women in varying age degrees, to the last one of them, stops still, frozen in their drinking and eating and making gossiping merry into total silence.

"I take that as a 'no', I guess." Rapunzel's green eyes look from blank face to blank face of many of the thoughtful princesses who were startled to hear their esteemed visitor wishing any association with that disowned and disgraced youngest Royal of the house of Egeskov.

Though one of the ten Princess brides of the Danes of Denmark may have had some unseen insider knowledge left unspoken.

"Okay…" Rapunzel trails off, her mind roiling for her next step as her topsy-turvy tummy chooses this moment to protest and she woozily stumbles back against the refreshment table.

 _Now what? Where are you and Hans,_ _Eugene_ _?_

The disappointed girl glances down in flustered frustration to watch how several frosted cookies and sugarcoated cruellers at the end of the table were magically disappearing into the carpetbag that she had left on a folding chair that one of serving nuns had moved from where it was in the front cloak room to rest by the refreshment table.

* * *

 ** _That same afternoon, down in the village._**

"Why do we have to hide out while Rapunzel gets to go inside? It's been like hours now! I wish I could be a fly on the wall at that big old dumb Castle of Hans'." Princess Anna of Arendelle kicks the empty metal milking pail that she had been tossing stones into while she whiled her impatient time away, was speaking rather loudly from where she and her gorgeous husband had parked their sleigh in a deserted and quiet stable barn on the outskirts of the estate village of Kvaerndrup, Funen.

"Keep it down, Anna. We're supposed be lying low and not draw any attention to ourselves, remember?" Kristoff Bjorgman says low in his sweet mellow voice to his headstrong bride as he supplies Sven and Svala with some water and feed.

{"See you later, Buddy."} Sven's deep timbre familiarly rustles through his best friend's synapses with a friendly fond farewell.

"Now, you two behave in there while we go to eat lunch." With a silly grin on his rugged features, Kristoff bolts closed the door and teases, causing his reindeer bull friend to blow slighted air through his muzzle in defiance.

The Wind Whisperer had obvious mind reading advantages that he didn't even require to see how his buddy of a reindeer pal, in full rutting season no less, thought about the comely blonde reindeer. Sven's rusty brown eyes widen at Kristoff's insinuation as he bashfully glances up at his female counterpart in the barn. Svala, for her part, gives Sven back a bold pair of enticing fluttered eyes. _GULP_

With a smirk as he mildly shuts down that close connection with his lifelong partner Rangifer, Kristoff hooks his muscular arm around Anna's shoulders. His long strides catch up to her quick paced gate in no time.

Anna leans her tense frame back against his stablizing strength with her anxious thought.

"You got to know Hans pretty good, right? Are you picking up anything, Kristly? You think that if cousin Rapunzel comes up empty, then Hans is really not there? Do you think that that Hans and stupid Eugene made it all the way to Corona before he…?" The gingersnap of a girl allows the unpleasant dangled question to hang in the summery morning air.

Anna and her guy stroll down the street that she once vividly imagined that she'd be traipsing along on another fella's arm, through the heart of the village that overlooked his Egeskov Castle in the Southern Isles.

Unafraid to address the querulous subject of her concern for her former fiancé with her true true love now, Anna poses the pertinent questions to Kristoff.

Focusing his mind to his newfound powers of soul, the blond mountain man releases a useless sigh.

"I'm not getting any sense of Hans' actual person… Exactly… I think… But there is definitely a spike in thoughts about him. I can't exactly explain, this is all still pretty new to me. Maybe they do know something that they're hiding. Probably due to Rapunzel's questioning of the taboo subject. She's a gutsy gal." As Kristoff gentlemanly opens the front door of the Café diner for Anna to answer, he lowers his gentle voice even octave deeper and lower is not to be distinguished.

"But no Hans…" Anna exhales loudly, a bit deflated as she chooses a seat in the very same bakery that Elsa had served as a waitress in just yesterday.

"Still…" Kristoff, in his mental hunt for Hans Westergaard, had an itching feeling in the back of the sixth sense that someone he knew – someone besides Rapunzel and Olaf and Pascal – some person he knew well was within Egeskov's near vicinity. But his diverted mind couldn't pinpoint who.

"I just have this crazy feeling we should be here. We're in the right place to find out what happened, I just know it." Not understanding his own muddled predictions, Kristoff shakes off the strangely icy sentiment that felt rather familiar and close to home, when the bakery Café waitress comes to their table.

"Good afternoon to some new faces in our humble village! What can I offer you and your… little sister…to have for lunch today, sir?" the impressionable young daughter of the Baker had been hopefully batting her long eyelashes at summery short sleeved, ripplingly muscle bound hunk of burnin' love the minute exciting Kristoff Bjorgman open the door of this establishment.

"I AM HIS WIFE. Thank you very much. My husband will have four eggs, over light with just a sprinkle of pepper on wheat toast, lightly buttered. And, of course, a tall mug of coffee. Black, with two heaping spoons of sugar." Anna pointedly orders the meal from the menu for **_her man_** **,** which her ginger temper was sure to spell out in no uncertain terms to the practically drooling and fawning over Kristoff's rugged good looks teenager.

 _Oh yeah. We're not drawing any attention here, Anna. Good job, Feisty Pants…_

Kristoff directs the mental message to his guileless other half. He toothily starts to whistle, hiding his red face behind the menu, when the few patrons of the bakery stare at the couple making the scene with a cowered back young waitress.

"And what can I get for you… Madam?" The similarly crimson faced, chastised young woman timidly asked the blatant ' _get away from my man'_ claws that just were bared from this young lady who was almost spitting flames at her.

Kristoff tries to grin up at their verbally abused waitress sympathetically, but she would not meet his eyes, in that much fear of Anna's obvious fury.

"Umm… Just a few of those hot gingerbread cookies and a tall glass of your fresh squeezed milk, please. That sounds good." Coming down from her chilly affectation with a tasty sweet treat, Anna had no idea which 'icy' milkmaid brought in the fresh milk from that cow out back there. She had no inkling of whose tender queenly digits had frosted these particular gingerbread men now piled on the plate before her.

"Oh look! They frost their gingerbread men just like Elsa and I do back home! With snowflake and sunflower button shapes on their tummies! It's funny, isn't it, Kristly?" Anna innocently surmises as she points out the artistically placed, perfectly symmetrical sunflower, snowflake, sunflower frosted buttons on her gingerbread cookie man.

 ** _CHOMP!_**

"Just as chewy as I like it, and super yummy, too!" Anna was instantly in a better mood now for the tasty cookie melting in her mouth that so reminded her of her beloved big sister who was thankfully back home was her parents in the safety of her North mountain Ice Palace.

After all, Anna was going out on a limb, even against her own better will, to find out if that runaway redheaded Prince of Elsa's was even still alive…

* * *

 ** _Egeskov Lutheran Chapel, later that afternoon…_**

The church tea social had wrapped up with amiable Princess Rapunzel making many new friends among the various European Princesses all tied together by the common denominator of their Danish Princes. Though some of the women were snobby, stately or cold, the others were affable.

Though she did not divulge her own Eugene's somewhat scandalous connection to this Royal command's lineage just yet, Rapunzel was gladdened by the end of the session. Though no closer to discovering anything about Hans' or her Eugene's current whereabouts through much of what these females, once befriended, opened up about with candid information on their youngest brother-in-law, the sheltered Princess of Prussia gained even further insight as to Hans Westergaard's motivated drive.

Proud that she had suppressed her fears and sick stomach pains to be able to be called a friend to at least some of the nine princess wives of the Southern Isles, Rapunzel had opted to stay behind in the Egeskov Chapel for a few moments to collect her pregnant self back up to par while the other Princess wives left to attend Mother Superior's visit in the main Castle.

The compassionate Princess makes her way slowly through the family kingdom church, with Olaf stuffed full of doughnuts and crumpets three pounds heavier in her carpetbag. As she was about to follow the others on their trek down the rear drawbridge path back to the water castle across the moat, Rapunzel overhears the soft sobs of a woman crying somewhere in the furthest back pews, near the choir apse.

But as Rapunzel approaches the sobbing woman, she could see that the golden-blonde, pale skinned, dreadfully slender beauty was not alone.

 _Lukas?_

Our Corona Princess is surprised to see in the emotional French princess' embrace, the short and pudgy young boy whom Anna had made fast friends with just a day or two ago at the Fattigskole convent some miles away.

Rapunzel stealthily moves back closer towards that rear row pew were Lukas was softly humming the church hymn 'Abide with Me'. She pauses to hear his encouraging song that finally garnered the tears to flow from this unloved, forgotten woman that the others had left to melt into the chapel the nave's dark shadows.

" _I need Thy presence every passing hour; what but Thy grace to foil the Tempter's power? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, Lord abide with me…"_

"Thank you, _tout-petit_ (little one). Thank you for your song. How did you know this old woman needed a child's sweet song today?" Princess Marguerite's deeply accented French voice, though broken and distressed, had a secret smile behind it intended for the boy who had wandered in and heard her cry, his sweetness wishing to console her in the best way he could.

"Are you old? I think you're too beautiful to be old, m'lady." The polite little boy, well brought up to respect his elders and women in particular, didn't exactly mean to be a ' _charmer'_. But let's just say that cajoling sweet words with the fairer sex was in his blood.

"Where were you all my life, _mon petit garcon_ (my little boy)? My, you are going to be quite a handsome rogue yourself someday, aren't you?" Marguerite pushes back the strands of errant wild bangs on the forehead of the little boy closed in her tender embrace.

She marvels at Lukas' toffee brown hair and something so familiar behind his gray blue eyes, the shape of his starting to be a tall Roman nose, the way his mouth's overbite curled up too cutely that you couldn't help be taken in by his sweet words and sweeter smiles.

 _Much like yours does, mon chere, Ivers._

Gazing deep into Lukas' eyes with her exotic dark ones, Princess Marguerite forgets for a moment her bitterness concerning her suave, charismatic husband these past seven years.

 _Not for lack of trying…But seven years that I have not been able to give you a single child. Never mind even just one beautiful boy you longed to make heir to your father's throne and present at least one Westergaard male among all the female children for the King's pride._

Marguerite's disturbed mind reverts back to the crux of the constant unspoken tension between herself and her husband all these years together. The demands of his kingdom of Denmark's traditional agatic male succession had taken its toll in driving the childless, infertile couple apart, she was sure.

"Just don't grow up to be a heartbreaker, _un beau_ (beautiful one)." The Frenchwoman secretly owned a passionate heart beneath that cold, crusty exterior she wore to the world with her pride as an outer shell. Her most recent miscarriage this past month, her tenth to date over their seven-year marriage, had made her especially emotional. But this important milestone 70th birthday of King Herbert made this return home trip and her presence unavoidable.

The golden blonde haired woman with her dark veil continues to hug Lukas' cuddly body to her, stroking his head in quite a maternal way. Marguerite, though late in life for childbearing, went up to the large cross standing at the main altar. She prays fervently for a son just like him to regain her disinterested husband's affection and love back.

"What's a…'heartbreaker', ma'am? All I know, Mama says her heart breaks for me when we're apart. But she has to go to work in Paris and leave me here to go to school at the convent. She says I'm her good little soldier. Does that make me a heartbreaker, too, m'lady?" Lukas' asks in all sincerity, his big baby blue grey eyes wide with worry.

"No, my cherubim. No, that makes you a précieux sweetheart." With a silent wish on her praying lips as she clutches the large golden cross necklace at her throat with one hand, Marguerite caresses Lukas' wild brown hair with the other.

"I like your Jesus cross, my lady. The Sisters of the orphanage gave me one to, but mine's not as big or shiny as yours." Unaware of his poignant effect on her, Lukas rummages his fat paw down his shirtfront to produce the small silver cross necklace upon which his name had been engraved by the school on the back.

"Lukas… What a nice name for a little boy… Rigborg?... How funny." The 35-year-old Parisian comments as she squints her no longer fearful eyes to read the small cross' engraved print. She comments on the coincidence of the name of the first floor room at Egeskov Castle that her excessively poetic husband Ivers insisted on staying in – often on his own - whenever they visited his father's castle. He explained his reason for abandoning his oft-broody, recovering from miscarriage wife was that this particular room had his favorite view of the estate's ' _romantic fuchsia blooms that stir the heart for love '_ in its famed Topiary Gardens.

"Lukas! Lukas! Where are you, my silly boy?! You were only supposed to escort Sister Clarice back to the castle, my good little soldier!" As the doors are flung open, Daphne's high-pitched squeaky voice rings through the quiet chapel in search of her son.

"Oh! Princess Marguerite! I thought you were already back in the Castle with the other princesses, My Lady!" All puffing and huffing, for she had run the whole way across the lowered drawbridge between the Palace and its complementary church to its southeast, Daphne comes bounding into the vestibule, calling for her child before Rapunzel had the chance to warn her.

"Daphne?" The French Princess stands her thin frail frame from the pew seat in all her boned petticoat puffed skirt glory to speak to her own lady's maid.

"Mama!" Six-year-old Lukas happily sings out to see his mother, opening his arms wide for a hug. He abruptly leaps from Princess Marguerite's lonely lap to run to his mother's embrace.

Marguerite squeezes the rosary in her now wringing empty fingers tight.

"This boy Lukas is _your_ son?" From the tight, neat bun French twisted to the top of her head, all the way down her shiny brocade satin yards and yards of dress skirt, to her elegantly turned heel hidden beneath her layered petticoats, when her exotic eyes were aroused, Princess Marguerite of Orleans was strikingly stunning.

The golden blonde haired, sharp nosed, pointy chinned aesthetic beauty's stare scrutinizes the plump, brunette little maidservant she had, out of the kindness of her heart, taken on from the kitchens of Egeskov. Marguerite soon made friendly Daphne her personal ladies' maid when the French Princess first arrived in this kingdom after an arranged marriage swept her off her feet by her dashing and debonair Prince Ivers seven long years ago.

"Why did you never tell me you had a little child?"

"Please forgive me, My Lady. I just didn't think… You would take me in as your personal ladies' maid, if I had this sort of… responsibility back home." Daphne submissively lowers her eyes as she pulls Lukas' wide-eyed head close to her chest.

"You think me so cruel that I would keep you separated all these long lonely years, far away from your precious babe?" With a tear in her eyes, the Princess of Orleans, who was often cross and severe, due to her emotional trauma that many miscarriages caused, was genuinely kind inside, as well as quite passionate, despite her tough outer shell.

But she would need to be very tough indeed, as the worldly Frenchwoman absorbs what her already suspicious mind had been coming to the miserable conclusion of, though her own snubbed heart was bleeding.

 _It was Ivers who suggested you to be my ladies maid, because you made 'the finest jams in the world', wasn't it? He always was especially kind to you wherever we traveled…_

"No. No… Princess Marguerite! You've only been so kind to me! My Lukas and I miss each other very much, but we correspond often, soldiering on until the times my Lord and Lady visit Egeskov." Daphne's sweet voices trembles as her tingling with fright body shivers all over while she explained calmly to the confronting older woman, with little confused Lukas caught in the middle.

Princess Marguerite stands perfectly erect with her thin, elegant mouth agape, simply staring at her trusted ladies maid across the pews, as red in the face Daphne shifts from foot to foot nervously before her.

"And that makes your short time together all the sweeter, right, Lukas?" Rapunzel takes this awkward moment in the afternoon church setting to interject her sunshine between the discomfited two women.

"Hello, Princess Marguerite. I'm afraid we didn't meet properly before teatime, because you weren't feeling very well, and I wasn't very well either." Rapunzel smiles with a charming sigh. "It's a shame all those lovely cakes and cookies that the kitchen staff and the kindly sisters of this Chapel set before us will be wasted, since only a few of your sisters-in-law were eating." Rapunzel sweetly strikes up a pleasant conversation.

"I must say, your sisters-in-law eat like birds at parties. There's so much left! But I suppose proper ladies are meant to eat like that. I don't know about you, Lukas, but I for one am famished! Come on Lukas, ladies. Let's see if us four late comers can enjoy some cold tea and crumpets together now in peace without all their noisy chatter. They were all going on and on about my hair and the tower, and my thief of a husband. Let's go see what those other girls left us." Bubbly Rapunzel invites, putting her interesting backstory out until Lukas catches on to her giddy mood.

"Yeah! Let's go! I'm starving!" Lukas takes his mom's right hot hand and familiarly grabs hold of Marguerite's lifeless, cold left palm in his other fat paw as he tugs both of them forward towards the refreshment table.

" _Non_! No. Forgive me, Lukas, but I am feeling a bit ill myself again… _Excusez-moi_ (excuse me), please, Princess Rapunzel, but I feel rather to discomposed and weak… Right now to eat or drink anything –" Princess Marguerite wrenches her hand from Lukas' grip and begins to back up distractedly to make a heart-disturbed escape.

"Ohh-oh!" Rapunzel, Daphne and Lukas watch in horror as the tall slender woman trips on her floorlength skirts and then on the carpetbag Rapunzel had just left at the chapel exit. Princess Marguerite begins to fall backwards towards the unforgiving marble floor of the vestibule, just out of any of the trio's reach –

"Don't worry! I gotcha!" Just in the nick of time, a pair of branchy arms come to life. Three mounds of inexplicable snow on this indoor August day, swiftly reconstitute themselves back into the form of a heroic man to catch the Princess of Orleans stumble backwards.

A heroic snow _man_ , that is.

" _CherDieu_! (Dear God!) What is that thing?!" Had she not been so devout a woman of faith inside of the sacred holy sanctuary, Princess Marguerite of Orleans may have reacted with more violence or piercing scream when she opened her frantic eyes to be greeted by the strange otherworldly creature's snow mound body that was not so harmoniously aligned together. A toothy mouth at the top, crooked charcoal eyes in the midst of his face and carrot nose at the base of his discombobulated mug made Olaf a terrifying sight to see for anyone.

"Olaf! It's alright, Marguerite! He's a friend from Arendelle!" Rapunzel cries in warning and relief for her snowman friend's fortuitous save, though she wasn't sure if this was quite the right moment for his amazing revelation.

"Oh! Sorry! This probably doesn't look good." The happy, never affected snowperson rearranges his face, a bit disturbingly, and re-smiles, properly now, at the shocked woman laid out in his arms.

"Let's start again. My name is Olaf. I like warm hugs. How about you?" Olaf gives his usual pleasant greeting that Lukas accentuates by rushing up in supplying the snowman with the hug he asked for, if only that the purpose to disarm the what could be frightening unknown magic creature for the already insecure, addled Princess of France.

The loving, generous boy with a heart bigger than the shaky circumstance of his birth had the knowledge that God was his Father, though he knew not his earthly one, as Lukas then gives the startled flushed woman his next warm hug.

The embrace receives an at first startled, then brilliant smile from Marguerite. Rapunzel's heartfelt words she had overheard earlier, when no one thought she was listening, ring in her ears: ' _I'm sure you don't have to bear a child yourself to know that a mother's love is a precious thing, blessed from Heaven.'_

Marguerite immerses herself in the tender embrace. There and then, in the eye of her emotional storm, the French royal lady decides to rise above the occasion rather than experience yet another mental breakdown.

"Daphne?" With the lilting touch of her French accent, Marguerite turns to her ladies' maid with an extended hand, followed by a soft smile.

"Yes, my Lady?" Daphne scurries over to help her tall, before unapproachable mistress up from the crumpled pile of little snowman Olaf's cool save of the terribly thin lady, back onto her feet.

The plump little maid, who had few family ties in this world, was aware her whole entire career that hard work and effort had built up, financially and emotionally, to support as a single mother her only boy, feared it was all about to come crashing down around her ears with a resounding ' _You're fired!'_

"No more _precious_ secrets between us, oui?" All of her own heart wrenched desperation over these past years of insecure self blame, useless self-doubt and melancholy depression that the holy sisters of her Cathedral back in Notre Dame had helped her through the dark days thereof, was all to make her handsome husband love her as passionately she loved him. Marguerite, as a good Catholic woman, who had come to her marriage late in life at the ripe old age of nine and twenty, handed over her prayer supplication to God to grant her a child.

Not only for her Prince Ivers' primogeniture inheritance right of succession that he and his eleven brothers were in rivalrous competition in their relentless drive to each claw their way to the top.

But it was her own pride as a woman, longing for the joy of bringing into her empty world someone so dear, who would be as close as a mother and child could be blessed, for all her lifelong…

"Now, let's go and have that lunch of cold tea and crumpets. To tell you the truth, ladies, I actually I prefer tea cold in the summer." Marguerite smiles, grasping Lukas' still outstretched hand in her tensed one to steady her slightly twisted ankle.

"And, Friend Olaf. I do enjoy hugs warm, very much, too." The stern, strict Princess Marguerite of Orleans, who had heard rumors of magical Arendelle and the cold North's royal Ice Queen, lifts her eyes to the Madonna and child the glass window depiction. The late afternoon rays of light beam through the Holy Child's halo glow of warmth to her sallow cheek gave her hope's pinkish color to go on living once again.

* * *

 ** _Inside_** **_Egeskov_** **_Castle_** ** _…_**

With all the ladies of the court attending some tea service in the church to meet with a visiting Mother Superior, and all the Princely men hosting the majority of dignitaries and ambassadors on a tour of Egeskov estate's massive grounds, the Palace was left practically empty.

Save for the servants who were all busily scurrying around in setting up downstairs for the birthday celebration tomorrow. So that meant Elsa had pretty free reign to explore the second floor of the expansive castle, which would complete the last area left for her to search in the main house, with only the stables remaining.

With her cute maid's lacy frill headband that accessorized with her black-and-white frock, Elsa had her own hands full in taking up the mantle of chambermaid whose job was primarily to tidy up the bedroom, stoke the logs of the room's fireplace and clean its grates, gather up the laundry and change the sheets of bedding. All in all, generally freshen up the bedroom with an airing out after each night's usage for its visiting, noble occupants for the next day.

Sure, Elsa, as an independent young woman of self-contained means, where little staff in Arendelle growing up meant a bit more physical labor and personal abode cleaning than normal royal young women of her queenly status, was not entirely incapable.

She and Anna, along with Papa and Mama, with few servants more than Kai, Gerda and Johanne around the household, had practically run their Arendelle Castle more like a ship than a Royal Palace. Papa, as a sheltered boy himself, when he became the adroit Admiral of his Navy he loved the rigorous life of the sea, and had always been the hands-on type who wished to be thoroughly involved in even menial ship duties and work's own reward.

So when it came to teaching his girls a proper work ethic, Papa imprinted on them both to be responsible for cleaning and clearing their own stations, or else leave all the dirty work for himself and Mama, or dear Gerda or Johanne. With Arendelle's gates closed for 15 years, they each had enough of extra large castle helpful housekeeping duties to keep themselves busy from day 'til night, doing what most Royal rulers would never dream. There were no palace perks for these industrious Norwegian regals, but a God-fearing clean living where their sheltered little family could take care of everything themselves.

Now with Papa's strict work schedule close in mind as she uncomplainingly changes the bed sheets, clearing tables and scrubbing muddy floors from mens' tracked in boots 'til her fingers were water wrinkly from room to room, Elsa was not too shy to dirty her pristine white hands.

Of course, Egeskov's modern updated plumbing system that had running water, up through some miraculous thing called 'pipes' into 'bathtubs' and 'sinks' in special 'watercloset toiletry rooms' on each floor of this high-class contemporary castle that spared no expenses for modern convenience, certainly helped a lot.

"Impressive. We definitely must get this in Arendelle." Elsa murmurs to herself of the costly castle upgrade. But she would not mind one ort, shelling out some of Arendelle's hard-earned riches for this ingenious endeavor at all. _Just think – no chamber pots to empty! Dear Johanne would be so pleased!_

She peeks in the cute little bathroom at the newfangled indoor plumbing watercloset bathroom on the second floor as she was carrying some newly washed sheeting up to be re-bedded.

As the hard-working new maid diligently rolled up her sleeves and set to work on room after room (and using a bit of ice magic to hurry along the task of doing up this floor's 25 rooms, which seemed endless, with all the guests that kept pouring in for the birthday celebration tomorrow) Elsa was beginning to grow a little less hopeful that she would find her missing Prince here in his homeland.

 _Sigh_.

Though disappointed not to actually find **_him_** , Elsa, after discovering that thrilling attic loft room Hans kept as a very flattering shrine to her alone, found so many more questions to ask handsome Prince now that she was getting to know his childhood past and youth into early manhood more.

 _Poor lonely boy._

Elsa recalls with a sweet smile that adorably boyish missive hung above the makeshift desk that yearned to be loved and belong… To her. And then that long list of top qualities of the aspiring young man to beguile her into falling for his charms was too amusingly conceited for her to take seriously.

 _I wonder which one of these bedrooms was yours…_

Elsa idly wonders in feminine curiosity as her ice cryokinetics and cool wind breezes certainly helped her speed up the normally all afternoon long tasks of a busy chambermaid.

After she finished her tenth second story upstairs bedroom dusting and spiffing up, the efficient new servant briskly walks up the long servant's staircase, her arms full of freshly pressed and clean sheets up to her chin. The exhausted Queen, even though getting pretty tired, knew that this perfect time in the vacant castle wouldn't last for long, so she must finish her tasks quickly if she was to go investigating again.

The hard-working gal didn't take the time to indulge in the break that the rest of the downstairs cast of servants was taking. Elsa tirelessly trudges up the steps into the long hall again in her continual search of Egeskov's empty rooms for her missing Prince in any clues that may lead to him from here that her alert eyes were still on the lookout for.

But it was the Queen of Arendelle's keen ears that picked up an urgent insistent cough and wheezing in the furthest room at the end of the long palace hall that caught her attention.

"Louise… _Louisa_ … **_Cough cough…_** " The choked out voice is barely audible and faint for Elsa to clearly discern what it was saying, or even if it was Hans' tenor or not under some kind of injured duress. But whoever it may be, the Ice Queen spared not the acceleration of her ice magic to carry her light feet down the twenty-five foot long corridor.

 ** _Cough! cough! Cough cough!_**

In a flash of ice, Elsa only pauses at the tall double doors for a split second before the plaintive gravelly voice erupts in another bout of coughing spasms violently.

Her ice power throws open the huge doors with those twin lion head crests and gold gilt trimmed doorjamb to doorknob to enter into the monstrously plush and ornate palatial bedroom.

Everything about this bedchamber inside screamed regal opulence to the intelligent girl's every step signifying to her that she, the incognito Queen of Arendelle, had just entered the chamber of the King of Denmark himself.

Her eyes strain to focus through the darkness at the king–sized grandiose wine and gold band brocade corded bed and its many velvet maroon mussed blankets, only to find it unoccupied.

"Louise… Is that you?"

Soon, the choked out muffled strains issuing from the floor of the opposite side of the lavish bed causes Elsa's tensioned body to spring to action. Her icy propelled heels adeptly hasten her around the luxurious bed until she was imminently kneeling at the sprawled out King's side.

Though the man was, as she was well aware, one day away from the allegedly elderly age of the septuagenarian year of 70, Hans' father still looked quite debonair indeed for his age, even in this distressed state.

His anxious, handsome bearded face utterly conveyed an attitude of regal dominance, despite its pained expression as Elsa brushes his salt-and-pepper dark brown and gray hair back from his creased brow where the tall imposing man was lying on the bedroom floor in a tizzy of fierce coughs and uncontrollable sputters.

"Your Majesty. Where does it hurt? What can I do to help you?" Her voice full of concerned compassion as she looked him over for any apparent injuries from the fall, Elsa's delicate fingers tenderly stroke the old monarch's chiseled square jaw and high pronounced cheekbones.

Wrapped in his deep wine red velveteen robe, King Herbert's eyes were closed tight in some pain that he was fighting to catch his breath through gritted teeth that had been difficult breathing through.

After a few moments of Elsa's insistent rubbing caresses of his hot cheeks and massaging of his heavy wheezing chest with her cold digits, his gravelly voice is finally able to speak cogently.

"It's my lungs… My lungs are weak. _Cough cough_. That pernicious, diabolical fool of a Doctor – _Huff_ _Huff_ – should not use his experimental medicines – _Huff_ _Huff_ – on the King – _Huff_ _Huff_ \- don't you think? Need a higher dosage, no doubt. I was only attempting to – _Huff_ –ring for that incompetent physician and tell him so – _Huff_ _Huff_ _Huff_ – when the blasted – excuse my coarse vernacular, young lady – bell cord up there ripped off its rope." Elsa follows the Danish King's gaze up at the black puff hanging by a string attached a golden roped cord that had frayed off, causing the accident.

"And this off-balance, decrepit old creature tumbled off the bed along with it. I hate to admit that I really am getting too old to realize my dream of propagating Westergaards across Europe, aren't I? _Those useless sons of mine_ … Just don't let them find me in a pitiful position like this…" The depressed, yet still proud old man was still concerned about his humiliation more than his own physical health as he struggles his stubborn, fatigued body to start to get up.

Conquering the world was becoming more and more difficult at his age, as the King was loathe to leave his proud kingdom into the hands of those young upstarts who were just waiting for their inheritance, as the hard man himself instructed them all their lives to do, with the goal to perpetuate the proud name of Westergaard

… _It's all too late_ …

"Hold on! I'll climb up to reach the rope for the Doctor to come. Now, you just lie there quietly and wait for me to help you onto the bed… Your Majesty." As nimble as a cat, Elsa kicks off her high heels and silently crawls onto the King's bed, standing on barefoot tippytoe to reach her long-nailed pale fingers up to reach the shank of ripped off cord.

Of course, she was too preoccupied with her urgent mission of struggling to reach up, to be overly discreet and careful with her shapely legs, and the King's yet approving eyes for a fine feminine figure landed upon her. However, it worked to her favor that he could not help but be distracted to take umbrage to her high-handed, bossy audacity—completely unacceptable for a servant maid girl, even in the King's infirmed state.

"What is your name, girl? I have never seen you in this castle before, have I?" King Herbert was impressed by her boldness to instruct his august self to ' _wait'_ for anything. As not a single person in all of his destined for greatness life had ever spoken to him before in the entirety of his dictatorial, domineering rule.

 ** _YANK! YANK! YANK!_**

"'Elsie'— whew! That was a bit difficult!" An exhilarated by all this activity Elsa calls over her hectic shoulder to the King's query.

"Hopefully the doctor will have heard that triple ring downstairs." With a blush at her flushed cheek boldness, Elsa announces, dusting off her hands as she gracefully, like a young gazelle leaps from the thick feathered mattress and back to the floor where she kneels back down beside the enthralled, prostrated man.

"My name is Elsie, Sir. I have just been brought in temporarily to help serve for your birthday celebration tomorrow, your Majesty." Elsa looks down at him with her most dazzling smile at the King gazes up at her in wonder of this maid's brash audacity.

"Now we'll get you back on the bed in no time." Elsa's long legs in motion and officious voice hovering over him quite mesmerizes the formidable dreadful ruler of this conquering land, until the slender female boldly leans down over the King's body to raise him up.

Recognizing that he was too weak and incapacitated for the lack of proper oxygen to be much help in standing on his own, Elsa put her thin arms around the larger man's chest torso and starts to lift him.

"Stop, Elsie. You are too delicate and frail a child to move me on your own. Where has that wicked, plotting footman Thomas gotten off to? This is too mortifying to bear. Call for that lazy footman at once! – _Huff Huff_ – No. don't. That useless rascal will be even more disagreeable and antagonistic in holding this gloat over me, as well telling the rest of the staff. You probably will even spread lies of how weak, pathetic and feeble your King has been. There is no one I can trust with this debilitating humiliation in this house, not even one of my sons. Especially not my sons. Those onerous, scheming boys will be glad to be rid of their old father at last. All they want is my throne, my inheritance, after all… No one has cared for me for so long… No one to share this big empty bed and warm me… Louisa… I'm coming soon…" The breathless King's wandering mind

"I will get my breath back soon enough. Just be patient…" The somewhat delirious sovereign unconsciously speaks aloud all that he had in his mind, showing to Elsa that the fierce Danish King she had heard so much in rumor, had mellowed a bit from the cold calculating dictator that he had once been. King Herbert speaks under his faltering breath as the young woman's tender ministrations and arms around his weak body hold him so intimately.

Was he talking to her, or was he talking to the invisible woman of his past, his long deceased wife named Louisa, sentimentally? Elsa could not be sure. All she knew was that she had the overwhelming desire to help this poor, disconsolate man and give him whatever warmth she had to offer.

"Just close your eyes and let yourself go. Please trust me, your Majesty." Elsa breathes in the older man's ear, her frozen powers, infinitesimally subtle, beginning to build around her.

"Are you ready?" This won't hurt, I promise." Elsa softly asks and comforts, she still in the sweet recent memory of how she used her ice to gently lift her own Papa's injured form in such a way, she wouldn't harm him with frostbite's sharp chill.

With sweet soprano tones in bolstering confidence, the autocratic King was captivated, as if in an intrigued trance. King Herbert closes his eyes as she suggested and feels his tense body being lifted away from itself.

"Let it go." Elsa murmurs her cool breath against his hot cheek as if in a song. The Ice Queen puts on a show of physical exertion, tugging and squeezing and wrapping her arms around the King's chest torso delicately. But her ice was the real star of the exercise here.

"Come on, Papa, we can do this." Elsa subconsciously lets slip the too familiar title involuntary as she lifts King Herbert's stiffened wide shouldered form buoyantly from the uninviting ground.

The Ice Queen specifically and deliberately maneuvers her mental cryokinetics to, as gently and imperceptibly as absolutely possible, with the insulation of his thick velvety robe in between, ice lift the King's distressed body to his large plush bed.

Once accomplished, Elsa quickly defrosts her ice so its chill was never felt and never seen as she goes about arranging the King of Denmark onto his bed quite casually, like a caring nurse would.

"There you are, Sire. You just relax until the doctor arrives." Elsa smiles over Hans' father as she tenderly smoothes back the loose hair at his grey temples after her busy cool hands had helped tuck him in beneath his plush, wine colored thick blanket.

"How – how did you do that? _Huff Huff – cough!_ You are much stronger than you appear, young lady." His weak, low-timbred, bass voice whispers out in sheer astonishment at this quite inexplicable housemaid – _no, this pale vision of a gentle beauty_ – who entered his bedchamber and blew in on a cool breeze to rescue him.

" _'Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us_.' Ephesians 3:20."

The King becomes lost in the pools of her large exotic blue eyes as Elsa recites the Biblical truth offered to King Herbert with that enigmatic smile on her enticing lovely magenta lips.

"Mysterious creature…" The imperious monarch rarely was so impressed by anyone, no less a lowly servile, unknown peasant girl, who had the cool composure and hidden inner strength—

… _Of a Queen..._ King Herbert was so bowled over by this pale white apparition of an angel came down to him in his moment of need, he relents in verbosely berating the attending physician who enters the door.

And quiet, slender Elsa the chambermaid weaves silently out through the opened doors, unnoticed and practically unseen by the doctor, as a proper servant should be.

"Are you unwell, your Majesty? Is there a problem? You look rather red flustered in the face. Has something happened?" The middle-aged doctor goes to the intimidating King's bedside and fearfully begins to listen to his swiftly pounding heart with a stethoscope to his professional ear.

"Yes, you fool. _Something_ has happened." King Herbert of Egeskov's Southern Isles gazes longingly from the door that just as magically closes with the cool breezes that she blew in on, to the portrait of his Queen that was hanging on the wall before him.

"An angel visited my bedside, today."

Elsa hears the King's strong voice say, as the characteristically cold and calculating ruler puts aside his regal taciturn, inapproachability to utter the words spicily.

The stern, severe, strict father of his clan of thirteen formidable sons of his powerful nation, on the eve of his 70th birthday, gazes at the portrait of his beloved wife, long passed from this world. Looking upon his Louise's soft features that never doubted him, though he was authoritarian and rigid with her children, King Herbert tries to imagine who - or what – that ethereal beauty was.

She who dared to touch the standoffish tyrant fearlessly with her cool tender hand, with her gentle wise words and icy blue eyes that seared through his soul…

* * *

" _There are more things in Heaven and earth,_ King Herbert _, than are dreamt of in your philosophy_." Hamlet, Act I Scene 5

* * *

 _Elem_ \- young man in Hebrew

 _Mench_ \- friend in Hebrew

 _Chutzpah_ – gutsy impudence in Hebrew

 _Olá_ – Hello in Portuguese

 _mon petit garcon_ \- my little boy in French

 _mon chere_ – my dear, in French

 _non_ \- no in French

 _CherDieu_! - Dear God in French

* * *

Happy Father's Day weekend, Frozen friends!

How's that for a 'Meet the Inlaws' intro?! ( _My Frozen take on the crazy wacky movie!_ ^_^) Not only do we get to see, through Rapunzel's eyes, 10 of Hans' brothers' better halves, but Elsa the chambermaid unexpectedly met Hans' Father, King Herbert of the Southern Isles! I'd say she made a fairly good impression with the old man, wouldn't you? ^_^

I did a load of research into some Princesses of that era and time, and modeled many of these new female characters in the story on these lovely real-life royals for the wives of our 13 + Denmark Southern Isles Princes! Many new characters equals many new words! Whew! That was the longest one to date! 14,000 + words!

Boy, Egeskov Castle is an interesting place to visit, with lots of people milling about for the King's August birthday! Tell me what you think of them! Which new Princess married to one of Hans' handsome brothers (' _who could be wicked, and would'_ ) was your favorite? (I'm personally edging towards the vivacious Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal - she's so boisterous and outspoken, and has a hankering for thieving Flynn, that I can't help but connect with her :) I hope my descriptives did those pretty princesses justice! ^_^

COMING SOON! If you want to see more of them, my big sis wowed me with her drawings , based on real life European princesses of that era, in Disney CG style of the Princes and their wives! She'll be putting up her wonderful CG artistry of all of these princesses and Hans' brothers soon! So stayed tuned! I'll tell you next week to look at her DeviantArt site for the pictures of the new Egeskoz cast!*o^)

Reviews, as always, are welcome!

We wish you and the Fathers, that your Holy Father above blessed you with here on earth, a very happy & fun day!

Get out there and play some horseshoes, watch his favorite game or just hang out watching some of his beloved old movies, so you have a great time together in celebration of the guy who started it all and took care of you growing up! We will be thankful for our Daddy here! ^_^ A loving, God blessed family is our grand Inheritance!

God bless!

HarukaKou


	11. Chapter 11 - I See the Light

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 11**

 **"I See the Light'**

 _ **SNORE! WHEEZE! SNORE! WHEEZE!**_

Late in the afternoon of the Southern Isles, where the sun was clearly on its decline, Princess Rapunzel and the brown haired, startlingly blue-eyed little boy looking over her shoulder share a look and stifled giggles.

The Corona Princess had finally let eager-to-help Lukas haul her carpetbag, nearly as big as him, from the Egeskov Chapel across the rear drawbridge towards the castle's back esplanade.

With the particular eye of an artist, Rapunzel views the happiness on the little boy's smiling chubby cheeks as he beams up at either of the two women he was walking between.

Princess Marguerite of Orleans, was a tall and slim blonde woman with a majestic elegance and poise that dripped from every thin angle of her being all draped in dark navy thick crepes and black brocade satins.

While Lukas' mom, Daphne the maid, the dark brown haired, short, pleasantly plump woman was a bit less than well-clad, wearing her dowdy, double hand-hemmed gray and white servant's dress.

"Wow… Is Egeskov Castle as _o-_ ** _pu_** _ **li**_ _ent_ and _o-sten_ ** _de_** _-ti-ous_ as the Sisters of the convent say it is, on the inside, too?"

The two women share a smile down at the innocent six-year-old child as he stumbles over the foreign big words that the nuns applied to the indeed lavish and luxurious, well groomed estate.

"Do those words mean big and fancy? Because it is that and way more! How can somebody ever have enough money to build a castle this _enormous_ and beautiful!? It's even taller and larger than you told me, Mama! It must've taken a _very_ long time make!" The jaw-dropped simple child had been taught the value of hard work and bucolic living from early childhood being raised by the austere convent sisters in the countryside. He stands amazed before the five-story high Egeskov Palace of Denmark all the walk across the long drawbridge.

Their attention was called to the palace's magnificence that they, in their everyday lives living in palatial surroundings, often overlooked. The three women pause in their stroll back across the moat to consider the grand mansion.

Although Rapunzel looks up at this imposing stone structure with a degree of uncertain fear, Marguerite gazes at the cold Castle with sorrowful disdain, and Daphne takes it in with a touch of anxious shame.

But Lukas was gazing up at Egeskov's impressive, over ornate views as an exuberant unjaded child seeing this remarkable kingdom, that he's heard so much about in the nearby Fattigskole school convent, for the very first time.

"Lukas! Hush! I don't think those are proper words for little boys to use when visiting respectable people's homes. Apologize to Princess Marguerite and Princess Rapunzel immediately." Little mother Daphne, bowing her head to each smiling noble woman, apologizes for her son's unintentional critical words of the Royal family estate.

"Why should he? That describes this dusty old tomb perfectly to a tee, young man. Who is this intelligent child I have not the acquaintance of, Marguerite?"

A tall, slightly hunched over middle-aged man with a spate of messy light brown hair, a raggedly cropped short, sparse beard and little spectacles pauses in his own purposeful stride into the castle's rear entrance door.

The man stops short his tracks to speak to the trio of women and the little boy who had been captivating them with his excited wide-eyed enthusiasm.

"A friend, Lars. Lukas is my new little friend." Princess Marguerite answers her elder brother-in-law as she, with almost motherly instinct, places her hands on Lukas' plump shoulders to shore up the small boy against the studious investigating eyes of the cerebral intellectual of the Westergaard clan.

Prince Lars, third in line to his father's vast empire, considers the oft brooding and unsociable Frenchwoman for a few seconds before his calculating mind decides to let go of the unimportant triviality of her rampant feminine emotions. The brilliant at all things studious man never tried – nor even cared to attempt to – understand all the intricacies of the human heart.

"Indeed." Is all Lars replies as he pushes his eyeglasses further up the bridge of his Roman nose that was accustomed more to being buried in a mind-numbingly thick book than being stuck into any sordid business of his other dozen, more or less, brothers and their wives and families—all of whom he chose not to interact with, unless absolutely forced to.

Especially not this flighty, easily set off into tears, fragile French Princess of his brother, Ivers.

"Excuse me. I have my books to prepare in the library for the dignitaries to view." After giving Marguerite a terse nod and Rapunzel an obligatory brusque one with a nominal glance, this cold, bookish Prince skulks into Egeskov's rear drawbridge backdoor entrance without another polite word.

"Awkward chap, our old 'Bookworm', isn't he? He would rather spend all this lovely, sundrenched afternoon indoors rather than roam the grounds showing our royal visitors our palatial estate dutifully with the rest of his brothers. Do forgive Lars' lack of manners, dear, dear Princess… Rapunzel, is it? What an interesting name. Ooh, I do like how it rolls off my tongue though. Ra- _pun_ - _zel_ … That is nice." The sultry voiced, deep throated demeanor of the sixth Prince of the realm intercepts Rapunzel, Marguerite, Daphne and Lukas, just as the quartet were to ring at the door where attendees were anxiously awaiting to whisk the group inside the castle.

"Well… You'd be the first to like it. My own husband called me Blondie when we first met. Or Brownie, now. I, myself always did think 'Rapunzel' was… kind of… an interesting choice of a name for Mother to choose when I was little…" Mumbling under her breath when she was nervous, the cocoa haired young woman's straightforward gaze falters under flirtatious Prince Didrik's more demanding eyes. "It reminds me more of… a radish than a proper Christian name, don't you think? But it's what mother called me all my life, though never did figure out why. I guess I just got used to the strange sounding thing…" Modest Rapunzel ingratiates herself and talks excessively when confronted by unsure emotions.

Prattling under her breath, her green eyes avert from the all-enveloping torrid stormy blue sea of Prince Didrik's penetrating eyes staring straight through her. The six foot three tall and extremely handsome 39-year-old man takes a provocative step in the visiting Princess' direction.

"Au contraire, Princess Rapunzel! A rose by any other name is just as enchanting. I am glad the rumors were correct that the convent sisters were steering a mysterious maiden in our midst to grace our company on this otherwise dull weekend." Charismatic Didrik, with a flourished gentleman's bow, never missed the opportunity to flaunt his irresistible charm with each and every eligible female of measured desirable beauty he encountered.

Rapunzel blushes violently when bold as brass Prince Didrik claims her fumbling fingers in his unrelenting grasp as they stroll into Egeskov's rear entrance.

"Give it a rest, for once, Didrik. Princess Rapunzel is a very happily married woman and an expectant mother. She is the special guest of Mother Superior of the Convent for Noble Maidens. I would show some respect to the sanctity of holy marriage, for once in your life, if you do not wish to be excommunicated." Devout Catholic Marguerite had a snappy tongue when it came to this most irrepressible, unpalatable member of her husband Ivers' family.

"Oh, yes. You and Ivers understand _perfectly_ the _sanctity_ of the holy sacrament of marriage. Besides, I am showing this lovely jewel of a lady all the respect her little golden heart desires! Probably even more than this dear of lost, stolen Princess of Corona appropriates back home in Prussia from her honorable cell – _ahem_ \- mate." Cunning Casanova Prince Didrik's own roguish eyes dance with teasing insinuation invoked at the Princess of Corona's shockingly abhorrent choice.

 _Imagine!_ A common criminal for a Princess' husband, who rocked the well matched royal world's delicate sensibilities for a whole season since their astonishing joining five years ago.

"Perhaps your commoner's fresh blood will grant you a male heir, at least, and outfox all of us bluebloods." Snobbish Didrik murmurs with a sour smirk at his own sore point of that unattainable goal in mind himself.

"I wish you and your treasured bundle of joy bountiful blessing, Princess Rapunzel, dear." With a sweeping hand he gestures to the expectant mother's orchid corset dress's tummy bulge. Then the suave, sepia brown hair side-parted coxcomb Prince Didrik opens the door, and turns around on his tall booted heel, leaving Rapunzel and Marguerite with a dashing exaggerated bow.

His uppity, conceited, steely blue eyes never even gave Daphne a single glance as the humble little ladies' maid longed to retreat to the servants' door in this Prince's haughty presence. But Marguerite's hands firmly on Lukas's shoulders never wavered, leaving the young mother who had been wishing to flee, in a conundrum.

"I think Lukas should go on up to our room, my lady, so I can attend to my duties in your rooms." Daphne finally finds the courage to speak up once Didrik is out of hearing range.

"Yes… Yes, that would be for the best." Marguerite answers, withdrawing her hands from Lukas' shoulders. There was a far-off look in her eyes that Didrik's crass words concerning marriage and children brought on again.

"Follow me. You go up to the loft room and lie down for a while, Lukas. It's been a long trip for you. Introduce yourself to Elsie, if she's there. Don't forget to thank her for letting you ride her horsie. I'll see you later, my little soldier." Daphne bows her eyes in humility to Marguerite as she takes the carpetbag from Lukas and returns it to Rapunzel before she and the child scurry back out and into the servants' manor entrance.

"Bye for now, My Lady, Princess Rapunzel! Say goodbye from me to Olaf and Pascal, too!" The sweet-tempered little boy stops to wave his hand farewell to his new friends as Daphne impatiently waits so she could efficiently get back to her job of preparing Princess Marguerite's room for the respite the not so healthy miscarried woman soon required.

 _Elsie?_ Rapunzel's inner subconscious registers the name that the squeaky voiced, plump ladies maid had just mentioned of her maid friend. But the brown haired young woman thinks nothing more of it when Marguerite beckons her to join her down the long hallway of the rear entrance. Rapunzel follows Marguerite through the claustrophobically disturbing, definitely intimidating hallway.

From top to bottom, the ground floor was overrun by many trophy heads of glassy-eyed deer and antlered antelope, as well as a giant bison in stuffed taxidermy in an alarming hodgepodge display. The twenty or so lopped off animal heads of all sizes and variations were vulgarly hung on both sides of the back entrance hall walls, as if in an amassed competition of which proud hunter was better with his weapon.

"Are you all right, Princess Rapunzel?" Marguerite returns from a discussion with Mrs. Folmer, the pinch faced housekeeper, concerning the visiting Prussian Princess' stay over arrangement.

"Ewgh… It's just that this hallway is so –" Rapunzel swallows hard as she looks around with reluctant eyes. From the distressed look on her greenish pallid face, to the bilious feeling obviously rising from the unborn child upset in her stomach, Rapunzel did not at all enjoy the positively alpha male oriented decor of Egeskov's rear entrance that led into an unbelievable amount of even more trophy heads and large wildcat rugs and other hunted game for sport on display in the adjacent expansive Hunting Room.

"I think the word you are searching for, mon chere (my dear), is _'morbide'_." The Frenchwoman, with a similar a repulsed look on her pale features, sympathizes with Rapunzel's wary eyed ' _degoutant'_ (disgust) for the dominant machismo attitude pervading Egeskov Castle's rear entrance.

"Much like the rest of this mausoleum, don't you think?" Marguerite fills in the word with similarly overwhelmed emotions concerning this disturbing practice of hunting for carnal pleasure.

To eat, to clothe oneself with skins, for self protection of family and home, yes, perhaps, but not to this outwardly abundant, unnecessary excess. From the sheer number of carcass displays along the hallway walls into the Hunting Room, there was a blood lust that ran through these Danes that Rapunzel had never before seen.

Her own laissez-faire father's peaceful kingdom was maybe a confusion of designs, past and present, but Corona was lovely in the liberal arts and music department; and the artistic beauty and subtle elegance of her Arendelle cousins' kingdom to the North certainly exuded regal grace in Scandinavian architecture and delicate refinement.

In fact, Rapunzel, in her studies with her wonderful mother Queen Arianna, who had made sure to update her inexperienced daughter about foreign kingdoms so she could be a well-informed ruler of the realm someday, had seen and heard nothing like this overtly powerful display of brute force that the Danish conquerors obviously possessed to boast to the rest of the world.

"All those dead animals staring down at us… It's kind of creepy. I'm sure my Eugene's not always refined vernacular could fill in the blanks better here. His language about this place would be undoubtedly classed as 'colorful', were he here with me now seeing this. And he's not even particularly an animal lover." Rapunzel's brilliant smile and tease of her absent lover wipes away the uneasy queasiness of the yet convalescing nauseous pair of women.

The brown haired Corona Princess' genuine openness causes the naturally uptight, emotional Marguerite of Orleans to start to lightly chuckle in a lilting tone while she leads her guest towards the Palace sitting room called the 'Admirals Room', where the housekeeper had set up some light before-dinner refreshments.

"I would very much like to meet your _chere_ (dear) Eugene. His humored frankness sounds rather refreshing." Princess Marguerite had grown up in the polite courteous world of concise royal etiquette and strict social proprieties that only made this Prussian Princess' unique match with a non-royal roguish hero more enticing.

"That's one word for my Eugene." Rapunzel giggles at the thought of her handsome thief's charm in meeting this slender French beauty. She herself humored him in his vain iteration of being 'not too bad with the ladies', though most of the feminine variety he had ever met would most likely beg to differ.

As Rapunzel and Marguerite were walking through Egeskov Castle's back halls towards the front opening vestibule, several of the hot and sweaty Southern Isles princes begin to tromp in, one by one, through the front entry.

The group of men of this Royal house had been out all afternoon giving a guided tour of the expansive estate to the visiting dignitaries and ambassadors who were in attendance of their father, King Herbert's birthday celebration tomorrow.

"I could think of another word for him, from what I've heard of that notable _gentleman_ in my business circles, by all respects." One swarthy, curly, bearded man says to another tall one wearing a loosely tied cravat as they pass by in hall.

The opinionated, stocky man and his tall, more collected brother then continue their previous discussion as the pair of women enter the Admiral's Room behind them on the ground floor.

The irked Southern Isles' Prince named Mattias couldn't help but comment on Rapunzel and Marguerite's conversation. The short and stocky, thick-necked, 40-year-old furry mustached man had returned to the cool of the palace's interior shade and welcome refreshments after spending all afternoon melting in the heat of this early August summer sun.

Fifth in line Prince Mattias, whose valuable time to him was money, was in rather a sour mood. Not only because he was vexed at the heat of the noonday sun beating down hard on the group giving the grand tour of Egeskov, but because the troupe of brothers all were forced to entertain the gaggle of traipsing about esteemed visiting marauders, all looking for the ostentatious show and tell and subsequent regal splurged banquet that the Southern Isles kingdom was famous for.

Their braggadocios King father insisted that his proud kingdom always display such prestigious opulence before the world that King Herbert believed in turn would establish acclaimed respect and venerated fear of his great kingdom.

Money minded Mattias had hoped to strike an important treaty deal this weekend for Denmark as he had been working on for months, to give as a gift to his father. Then **he** would rise higher in the King's eyes above his other brothers.

But unfortunately for the business-savvy, deal making prince, his British business partners from Weselton and the Russian ambassador accompanying the Czar himself, who had just arrived an hour or two ago, were in no mood to negotiate England's iron and coal offerings, nor the plentiful resources available for trade in the Siberian tundra.

The older Russian man and his two capricious and particular Russian daughters, immediately, upon arrival had marched to their respective rooms with no intention to convene politely with anyone. It appeared Egeskov's northeastern neighbors were no mood to negotiate definitely on anything, right down to the now tentatively arranged double marriage betrothals.

Expressly, Rune's engagement to the older Princess Eugenia of Russia was on the rocks.

Literally.

Stones of an inferior impure quality were passed off as the affronted proud girl's precious engagement ring. The indignation had caused such an uproar between one of Egeskov's youngest Princes and the insulted Russian Princess, who was extremely particular about jewelry, now brought the state of Denmark's relations with the massive kingdom to the northeast in question.

 _ **PLOP**_ **!**

A deflated walrus mustached, carob brown haired Mattias stomps his big-boned form into the ground floor Admiral's Room. He flops down to the Dutch handmade chair and matching divan next to the delicately carved wooden cupboard so heavily in frustration that the fine porcelain and imported china shivers and rattles on its shelves dangerously.

"Control yourself, Mattias. Those dignitaries and ambassadors out there will talk of your sulky ill temper if you don't curb your vexation. You always have to stay cool and aloof in business and they will come crawling back, you'll see. Fortunately for you, I calmed them down by promising complimentary books from Lars' precious library collection. That's where they all are now, choosing their gratis." Dapper second in line Prince Anders, with his casually combed forward grayish cedar hair, neatly trimmed sideburns and beard, appearing sleek in his notch collar vest, was as cool as a cucumber when it came to business.

"Use walking out of the deal to your advantage in your negotiations—just as I taught you the art of the deal when you were young, little brother. Whether it be horse trading in the stables or stock brokering at the market, they will come back in no time if you stay tough with your price, but give them a little of what they want upfront, with intention to put your foot down unrelentingly later, and they will leave happy now." Prince Anders also was the most calculating customer of the group of brothers, and he was in charge of a great deal of the business end of the estate's finances.

"After you stormed off, I explained to some of the softer of heart diplomats that your discomfited attitude was due to your anxiety over the pair of your little girls catching a cold on the trip here, as well as the general disdain of summer weather, that that portly Spaniard, too, shares. As in hunting, you must understand the mindset of your quarry."

Apathetic on most fronts, Prince Anders was the manipulator of the clan who had an uncanny knack on conniving his other brothers into doing as he wished, especially business-wise.

"Thanks for that, Storbror. I'll keep all you said in mind for later negotiations." Older brother Anders sounded quite helpful at this moment to a grateful Mattias. But what Prince Anders failed to inform his younger, more honest in his quest for money, rather than the power that Anders craved to the point of obsession, was the fact that Anders himself had already secured a deal. The older, devious brother had covertly arranged an understanding with the Duke of Weselton to purchase the much sought after iron ore from his own personal connections in the Eastern kingdom of Serbia, where the Duke's sister's husband's nephew had some pull.

So Mattias' deal with Russia would be moot, the demand satisfied already by his savvier older brother, who looked to benefit by it in the King's eyes instead. But the younger man wasn't to know that little detail, was he? It would ruin his day.

"Brother Mattias! Come have a nice glass of fresh squeezed lemonade your Beatrice made for the ambassadors and you poor boys, after spending all afternoon out in that stifling August heatwave! Jurgen and Franz are already having seconds!" Sweet Princess Hermine of Baden, along with tenth-in-line son Franz' timid wife, Princess Amalia of Netherlands, were at the desk table serving some cool lemonade from the punch bowl in the Admiral's Room where the family was gathering.

"Perhaps I will teach those old dogs a lesson in negotiations myself. Hmph." Stroking his thick mustache, Mattias stalks off to collect some lemonade, marching right past where the Duke of Weselton was deep in serious talks with the Serbian ambassador, signing a deal in Anders' favor, right under Mattias' large square nose.

"Did you drink this lemonade, Hermine?" Prince Berte, with his long coiffed walnut brown mustache, Van Dyke beard and asymmetric, horizontal bow tie at his high collar, saunters up to his blonde wife and accuses. The crowd of visitors begins to intermix with the wives that had come down from freshening up to join their returned husbands in the growingly populated Admiral's Room and adjoined Yellow Room.

"Yes! No? A little… Wasn't I supposed to, Berte? I always loved drinking homemade lemonade growing up!" The airhead blonde young girl with the bobbing up and down, curled, short ponytail and constant loose wisps of mussed hair, puckers her cute mouth as she tries to recall if drinking lemonade was on the 'NOT PERMITTED' list of can't dos that her hubby, the anxious new father to be, enforced on the ditzy Princess mother of his first child.

A first child that, if a boy, could spell **Inheritance** in bold letters for the Southern Isles' primo genitive traditional agnatic succession that would certainly raise his ninth in line status in his strict parent's eyes.

"Didn't that old midwife we conferred with say that craving sour food was bad for having boys, Hermine?" The mocha haired Berte's flatlined voice asks in a dark tone.

"Yes. But that's just an old wives' tal—" The exuberant blonde's curls bounce up and down in contrast with her head movements back and forth in her answers.

"And are lemons sour, Hermine?" Thirty-six years old and boss of the world, Prince Berte cuts her sentence off and demands of his young wife with the condescending question.

"… Yes…" The poor, red-faced girl, being publicly ridiculed, was on the verge of tears as she admits her 'wrongdoing'.

"Don't you wish to give me a male heir, Hermine?" He says in that all-knowing tone devoid of all compassion that plays on her heartstrings like a fiddle.

"Yes! Oh, yes, I want a boy, too, very badly!" As the sweet faced girl pleads like she was on trial, Rapunzel, who had been watching from the sidelines, almost speaks up. But strict Princess Adelaide, Prince Jurgen's wife, standing right beside her, holds Rapunzel back and gives her a cautious slight headshake in warning.

"Then don't do it again." Threateningly making his point, cold Berte's darkest green eyes flare at his wife. After finishing his own glass of lemonade in a quick single gulp, the bearded young man confiscates his wife's nearly full glass of the sweetened pale yellow liquid and spills all its content into a nearby planter. Young, impressionable Hermine watches in tightlipped, admonished shame.

"Yes, my husband." The joyful girl of moments ago barely can squeak out in a quiet chastened whisper as she holds her two hands to her chest listlessly while her husband turns and coolly walks away. Two of his brothers nearby, enjoying their glasses of cool lemonade – horseshoe mustached Prince Jurgen in his Søværnet naval issue light grey uniform and pulled back, deep chocolate ponytail, and deep hickory, long-over-ears curly haired, chin-curtain bearded Prince Franz in his relatively loose shirt and stylish, patterned checked trousers - chortle lightly at the marital scene of their brother and his silly bride.

Ignoring them, compassionate Rapunzel mingles through the room's gathering to place a kindly hand on abandoned Princess Hermine's trembling arm. No one else dared go near the berated girl, all the other women gathering to the other side of the room in tittles of conversation just to change the awkward subject.

"He's just uptight because he's worried about your health." The Princess of Corona empathizes with the girl quite similar to her age, as Rapunzel pats her on the back of her shivering hand.

"Really?" Hermine tries very hard not to tremble so and cause a scene, but the sobs she was holding back inside, with no one ever to confide in her silly emotional jaunts, were difficult to keep hidden all the time.

"Those are the only times my Eugene ever raises his voice to me. When he's scared that I'll get hurt and he'll lose me. Because he cares so much, like he treasures me more than anything else in the world. So I know loves me." Rapunzel explains as best she could from her own experiences, her heart open on her sleeve to this sister in need, as she leads her out into the empty hall, no one caring to watch.

"How can you be so certain for sure that he still loves you? Do you really believe so even when we're sickly all the time, unable to be…close anymore, and losing our figures?" The uncertain blonde young woman whispers every first mother's secret plights, her eyes trained on her good-looking man in his low cut vest and stylish checked trousers across the room over kindhearted Rapunzel's embraced shoulder.

"I guess… because I can still see that same light in Eugene's eyes, every time he looks at me. I didn't know what life was about at all until I met him. It was when I realized I loved him truly, I think, that's when my life began." Rapunzel had asked herself the question so many times, the answer always coming up the same. Her Eugene had shown her his love in so many different ways. But her life only began when she was willing to give him her love in return.

"I think your Berte feels that way about you, too, Hermine. I saw that same protective passion in his eyes when he looked at you." Rapunzel glances at the Prince across the room as she and his young wife together gaze at his strong profile.

"May I bring your luggage up to your room, Your Highness? It appears some unknown liquid may be… dripping… from it." The half blind older Butler Folmer interrupts this tender moment to call Rapunzel's large carpetbag to her attention for the moisture it was leaking.

"Oh! That must be my… Water bottle! Eugene packs an extra one for me whenever we travel. I'm always so thirsty, you know, now with the baby on the way. He's constantly watching out for me, even when we're apart." Rapunzel smiles, genuinely dreamy about her gorgeous lover.

"But he's a terrible packer! You should see the mess he leaves my undergarments in!" Rapunzel then comes out of herself to whisper conspiratorially in her companion's shocked ear, with a naughty glint in her green eye to the other young woman her head was bent to. This causes Hermine to break out into an astonished chuckle at this Prussian Princess's boldness in this conservative Victorian era where such brash subjects remained unspoken.

"Plus, your Berte may have a good point about drinking clean, pure water instead of over-sweetened or too sour lemonade. The extremes give us pregnant ladies mood swings, eh? Don't know about the baby, but it's not good for our delicate psyche!" Rapunzel's wise words intermixed with silly stories make Hermine giggle her tearful fears away.

"Are you going to be all right, now?" Rapunzel asks the young girl, wrapping arm around her bare shoulders like a true sister would.

"I wish you were really one of my sisters-in-law, Rapunzel. You're the only one I've ever truly connected to in this house, as a kindred spirit." Sweet Hermine warmly hugs Rapunzel, ignoring the ice cold carpetbag between expectant young mothers. "Ooh! They're moving to the Yellow Room! Come on!" The ditzy blonde suddenly squeals and hurries to drape herself upon her husband's not unwelcome side. She was gladdened to shyly look up to see his eyes, full of ardor, intent on her.

"You have no idea." Rapunzel mumbles aloud to herself on their sisterhood's not so shaky status as she slowly begins to tread the hall with her large carpetbag held up to her chin. The Princess of Prussia exchanges glances with the slow-moving guests in the hallway as they traverse between the two open sitting rooms.

"Okay. Let's review which of Hans' brothers I've met so far." The short brown haired Princess whispers into the small breathing/communication hole near the latch of the thick canvas satchel about the dribs and drabs of conversation she had picked up from the various couples as she was wading through the Admiral's sitting room.

"First, there was Didrik, the cool Casanova. He's Princess Antoinette's husband. And I have to tell you, I don't like him at all. Too slippery, like a snake." Rapunzel scrunches her face, recalling his cloyingly handsome, smarmy smirk oozing charm at her.

"Then, we met Princess Isabelle's Lars. He's the smart bookworm type. Definitely on the list of who I might ask about Hans… Although, he didn't seem that…approachable." Cocking her head, Rapunzel considers the intelligent, yet scatter-brained older man's trustworthy option, though his unconcern and aloofness at his surroundings and other brothers present here were disheartening.

"We overheard how frustrated Prince Mattias and his cunning older brother, Prince Anders, were when they were discussing some serious business matters. They're too wrapped up in business and too preoccupied to care about helping me." Rapunzel writes both of them off the ledger in her mind.

"And then there were those two boys who were snickering at poor Princess Hermine's super strict guy Prince Berte. They seemed a bit vague, and a tad cruel. Oh, what with their names? Princess Adelaide's husband was named… Jurgen! Yes, the one on the left was Prince Jurgen! And Princess Amalia's big muscled, well toned guy by the desk table was called…Ummm…." Rapunzel, so far doing pretty good for just meeting all of those brand-new faces in new places from memory, amidst her chat with the other pregnant young girl, stumbles over just one more remaining name in this first barrage of Eugene's half-brothers.

"FRANZ!" Unzipping his bulging mouth, Olaf could no longer contain himself as he quite spontaneously answers the curious cousin of Elsa and Anna with the answer he had picked up earlier. Olaf carefully paid attention to names now, after that first baffling affair with Kristoff and Sven trying to trip him up with their monikers.

The snowman's not so muffled voice calls out rather verbosely just when Rapunzel, thinking her contemplative recollection sounding-off was at a close, enters the Yellow Room. Everyone gathered inside stops mid-conversation to look up and blink twice to just stare at the noisy newcomer.

"I'm sorry. What was that…you said? Princess… Rapunzel of Corona isn't it?" The polite Crown Prince of Southern Isles, oldest son, Kaleb, accustomed to taking the reins, was first to recover from the shock of this Prussian Princess' odd voice pitch change that sounded almost _male_ …of a wobbly, sloshy sort.

"Um… Yes… That's me! What I started to say— _what I was trying to say_ was –" Timidly looking down at her twaddling fingers as she mumbling repeats herself, Rapunzel panics as twelve pairs of eyes inquisitively stare at her, awaiting an explanatory response.

But for one terrible moment, the once lonely Princess, who lived a completely solitary life for eighteen long years, with the exclusion of mute Pascal the chameleon as her only friend, with no human contact beyond her captor 'Mother', Gothel, and conversed with only herself in the mirror, now freezes up.

Rapunzel's large green eyes were wide as wide could be as her fists ball up in total dread fear, glancing from expectant face to face as she bites down on her bloodless lip hard.

That is, until she hears a gregarious voice echoing smile in her head. The unforgettable music of another mortal being's tone saying the immortal words ' _Alone at last'_ reverberates in her soul. And that voice continued to speak to her, flirt with her, tease her, cajole her, ask her questions that she could only dream about all of her life.

And Flynn Rider, the wanted thief, answered Princess Rapunzel of Corona's greatest question of all - _When will my life begin?_

 _…Now that I've seen you…_

"FRIENDS!" Yes! I just wanted to start this conversation by calling you all my… 'Friends!' Yes! Ummm…Because I wanted you all to know right away, on behalf of my father and mother the King and Queen of Prussia, how much we wish to count each of you here in Egeskov…as friends of Corona!" Morphing her fear quite diplomatically smooth as a Princess Royal should and as Mrs. Flynn Rider could, Rapunzel covers for Olaf's enthusiastic faux pas.

As her silent audience observes her warm and, at times, enthusiastic bright words, Rapunzel shoots a glance over to Marguerite, who gives the sweet girl back one of her rare dazzling smiles.

A smile which, her estranged husband, on the other far side of the room was then enticed to join in with. Prince Ivers stands from the Louis XVI desk seat, where the auburn brown haired man was writing correspondence, to meet his normally sullen and brooding Princess Marguerite's brilliant smile with a surprised, yet promising one of his own back.

"Bravo! How very eloquent you are, Princess. Now I extend our hand of friendship to you as well. It is so infrequent that we have the good fortune to receive to our kingdom such a charming and independent visitor—without her male escort, nor any Royal entourage— beyond our own dear Mother Angelika. You are quite enriching." Forth in line, aristocratic Prince Ivers, his startlingly azure blue eyes completely trained on his wife's inquisitive, reaching out ones to him even as he speaks, congratulates Rapunzel in his deep throated snobbish voice that screamed regal breeding and decorum.

"And of course, in the absence of your husband, we here Egeskov are pleased to be at your service, my lady." With the debonair tilt of his comely head that spoke of his own coy charm beneath that dashing, dark mocha handlebar mustache, Prince Didrik makes his re-acquaintance with a full-fledged sweeping bow and kissed back of her hand and adds, her name again playfully stressed: "We Princes of the Southern Isles are at your _every whim_ , Princess Ra _punze_ l."

His own wife, the passionately cold Princess Antonia of Spain, grimaces in his direction wordlessly, giving wide-eyed innocent Rapunzel a warning evil stare. Tossing her whilte feathery plumage over her shoulder indignantly, her long black velvet dress rustles along with her stiffened satin skirt. The dark-haired beauty rises from the Louis XVI long setee that she had been primly adorning beside her golden blonde plated sister-in-law, the graceful Elisabeth of Belgium.

Princess Antonia pauses in her stride to openly glare back at her overtly flirtatious mate.

Long ago in their arranged young marriage, Antonia had learned how many a feminine whim had taken her roving indigo blue-eyed Didrik further and further away from her over the years.

"Yes, indeed, we all have remarked that our Prussian neighbor is extremely bold and daring to travel on her own." Kaleb's wife, the genteel Emma of Sussex says with a stately smile. The dutiful older woman was always the gentle calm in the midst of Egeskov's violent, emotional storms where she diffused her inflamed or dizzy sisters-in-laws from speaking out of turn.

"Will your dear husband be joining us to the King's birthday festivities tomorrow, dear Princess Rapunzel? He would be very welcome to make an appearance in Egeskov's court, to be certain." Genuinely amiable and agreeable, lovely Princess Elisabeth adjoins the conversation. She, unlike many of the stuffy and strict relations here in stark Egeskov who may have snubbed the commoner husband of this unique princess with the audacious short cropped haircut, held some rather modern views to match her own contemporary hairstyle and modern fashion sense in an off-the-shoulder pretty flower-print gown.

"Yes, indeed. We would like to get to know our Prussian neighbors more." Pretty Princess Isabelle of Italy's blonde ringlets sway as she gracefully moves in her bronze and chocolate colored brocaded satin across the Yellow sitting Room.

Her bookish, always busy husband, Prince Lars, had no opinion one way or another on his wife's independent, open-minded views. Isabelle, for one, would not mind meeting Rapunzel's not so savory choice of a commoner for husband at all. In fact, as the Italian woman saw it, if Rapunzel's sweetness and inner happy glow was any judge of the matter, all Royals should be able to marry beneath their station.

 _Ahem_! Rupunzel clears her throat, emboldened to ask her question with so many of the fine gentleman smiling genially at her appearing to sound so obliging.

"Well, that's a bit to the point of my question. Now that I have met you all, would it be too much to ask if any of you princes here had seen recently or know the whereabouts of your youngest brother, Prince Hans?" Her voice trailing off as the sound of a pin drop could be heard. Rapunzel was growing increasingly ill at ease for her bold question as she looks to each person's face. Their eyes ranged from frightened to scornful to dismissive at Hans' name.

Princess Adelaide in her darkest brown prim tight bun, twirls her string of pearls between her perturbed fingers. She had been a member of this household long enough to predict how that question to the royal brothers would be received.

Everyone in the room shoots each other looks. The brothers present stare from one another almost guiltily and then back to Rapunzel uncomfortably now, unsure of the proper protocol's tactful response to her invasive, unexpected query of their family's undesirable black sheep.

"That's ridiculous! You boys are just trying to divert father's attention from your broken engagements and sordid affairs with those catty Russian princesses of yours!" From the hallway outside of the room, outspoken Prince Peiter's big manly bellow matched his big manly body frame as he ridicules scrawny little twin brothers' flights of fancy as cover for their disintegrating marital problems and concurring diplomatic disgrace for the kingdom.

"But they were riding **magical** **flying** **reindeer**! I swear! It was a big blonde Goliath man from the great North on his ferocious foaming at the mouth reindeer bull!" Prince Ruddi's voice cries out vehemently, demanding to be believed by at least one person.

"He had four huge muscled arms that simultaneously shot multiple magic arrows from his bows that even stopped rifle bullets mid-air! And that screaming banshee wench of his I'm sure was a wild Celtic warrior woman with her face paint and flaming orange hair of fire on the other reindeer. And just as deadly! You should've heard the venomous, taunting words spitting from her mouth! That Valkyrie even threatened our kingdom with fire and brimstone to soon rain on Egeskov!" Prince Rune's recount of yesterday's harrowing encounter with a pair of almost mythological invaders from the North riding in on magical flying reindeer to conquer their kingdom only proved to make the twins appear more foolish than the family already considered them.

The twin brothers, nodding intently back and forth, support one another's tall tale that grows taller by each retelling, loudly storm the Yellow Room with red-in-the-face big brother Peiter and his chuckling, highly amused wife Princess.

"And I bet they were the ones to release, as their first strike, that gigantic one hundred foot tall creature behind our stables. Its hideous, sharp dagger fanged face froze us to faint under its magical icy stare—" His blonde hair as frazzled as his contorted face, Ruddi starts to descriptively extrapolate about the twins' unfortunate incredible encounter with Snow Beast/ Marshmallow yesterday evening on the grounds of Egeskov.

Their noisy conversation causes Rapunzel to let out a sudden gasp, her grip on her wriggling carpetbag's increasingly heavy handle slips to drop down to the floor with a big **_THUD_**!

Inside the bag, Pascal soundlessly screams cowabunga! as his webbed feet act as snowboard skis across poor Olaf's dissembled mountains of snow inside the topsy-turvy luggage.

" **Rune! Ruddi!** Remember, you're in the presence of a lady! Show some proper decorum, please!" Pushing into the doorway behind Peiter and his ample wife, second eldest brother Anders berates his battling bratty youngest twin brothers – _almost the youngest_ – as his serious dark navy eyes note Princess Rapunzel's frightened discomfort when the rowdy boys entered the brightly lit, well furnished room with their loud argument.

"But just ask Captain Jorgenson, Anders! He was there!" Red in the face, Prince Rune, his murky burnt orange hair wild and askew, invokes the name of Egeskov's stoic, Haeran-trained Captain of the Guard who took some potshots at the enemy on reindeer-back invasion force before they got away.

"He'll vouch for us! Between his crack shot rifle and my well-trained archery, we sure scared those vicious invaders away!" Rubbing his dark orange goat beard and chin patch, Rune defends his stance, gilding the lily of his own skills in the matter.

"I wish they didn't get away before we got the chance to blow them to smithereens out of the sky! We should march upstairs and tell Father that we're declaring war on those weaklings!" Warmonger Prince Ruddi runs a gangly arm over his virtually sticking-up mane of bright yellow hair that made him even more startling a subject to look at.

"War?!" Adelaide, Elisabeth, Mary and Amalie all gasp in horror, hands flying to their shocked lace covered throats and appalled, frightened open mouths—their delicate sensibilities upset and offended.

 **"Enough!"** Eldest Prince of the Danish Realm, Kaleb, after deliberating quietly on the sidelines, upbraids his younger brothers' disrespectful behavior that was upsetting not only the visiting Princess Corona, but all of the other women of Egeskov as well.

Silence befalls the large sitting room. The 47-year-old man with the deep umber Balbo beard, resembled his Father in looks and authoritative domination more every passing day. As the salt and pepper, next-in-line ruler under his father the King, Crown Prince Kaleb's abrupt command was law in this castle.

"Father is in no condition to listen to any idle salacious stories, questionable diplomatic embargoes, concerning broken betrothals, nor your nonsense and demands for military action against imaginary enemies. Father will already be perturbed enough with the political mess that you've already created with our neighbors to the Northeast." His quiet anger was more frightening than their other older brothers' noisy wrath, as tall and imposing Kaleb glares down the troublesome twin terrors.

"I will consult with Captain Jorgensen on that alleged incident later. And we will hear nothing more on the other matter until Count Rügen returns, and the counsel can convene." The eldest Prince refers to the King's right hand man whom they all respected as their instructor growing up, Master Rügen.

"But, with all the guests currently assembled on the estate, we have to think of saving face. And Father's birthday celebration comes first." Overconfident Prince Kaleb's darkest blue eyes stare the twins down until they dared not question his laying down the law. The oldest brother was feeling his oats of his recent power increase.

Prince Kaleb had been taking more and more influential control since his father, dictatorial King Herbert, had been lately laid up for these past few months by physicians' order.

"Now that that is perfectly understood in the family, we must attend to our visiting dignitaries, and see if someone can entice those insulted Russians from their rooms, perhaps. Mary." Kaleb, finished speaking, leaves the niceties of etiquette procedure to his wife the rest of the way.

"Yes. I do hope that brother Lars has not bored them all to sleep while showcasing his dusty old instructional research book series to his captive audience of foreign diplomats. Shall we go and save them by announcing aperitifs before dinner, using your charms to extricate the poor souls from Lars, ladies?" The calm and stately older woman with the dark tan bun and curls along the sides of her face, in a pale aqua empire waist dress, alights from her favorite window seat. She leads the feminine entourage out to the hall towards where Lars was holding court in the far end library of his bookish environment.

As each of their departing wives leave the Yellow Room to attend to their collective duty of seeing to the visiting dignitaries, the Princes decide to go for a drink and a smoke in the Billiards gaming room before supper.

"Ooh! Isn't it exciting when these boys argue? Like an act of some tragic opera! Or maybe a Shakespearean drama!" The dark hand, unsinkably effervescent Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal rushes over to hug an arm around a weary faced Rapunzel's side. Her question of Hans had been lost in all the cast's angry words, and Rapunzel had been pushed to the side, not knowing where she should be.

"Oh! My poor little love! You're trembling! You must not have any brothers of your own at home. See me? I have three of them. All they do is argue like that! And even worse! It usually ends up with bloody noses and black eyes back in Portugal! This fight was rather tame! You should see them go at it back home!" Gloria squeezes the shocked pregnant young girl to her plump chest. "This happens all the time to such a fine group of competitive strapping young men! They argue, they fight, they have conflict and harsh words. Then it all passes, and they go play a round of billiards. Until next time, it starts all over again. The rivalry is a palpable constant struggle around here. Do not worry your pretty little head about it, my Prussian beauty. It is what brothers do!" Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal grins widely, her chubby arm slides around Rapunzel in quite a sisterly hug.

"Come with me up to the music room and tell me about your husband. Dreaming about a good-looking man while at the pianoforte always takes my mind off the family squabbles. Let me play us some pretty music to forget about these troubles for a while." The vivacious woman meets the more pensive and petite Prussian girl's eyes.

"Cheer up, my girl! I've heard rumors that your roguish thief is quite a catch, as they say. Does he have _very_ fast hands?" The pleasantly plump Portuguese Princess playfully winks at Rapunzel as they leave the Yellow Sitting Room and go up the tall steps towards the second floor Music Room.

"Yes…Okay." Rapunzel confirms and agrees with a small blushing smile. "Are you coming too, Marguerite?" Rapunzel asks her other new friend to join them, when she sees the quiet French Princess still seated unnoticed in the window seat as the only silent person left in the vacated sitting room.

" _Non, mon amie._ (No, my friend.) You go on. I think I will just sit here and get some sun." Marguerite was distressed again that the smile passed between she and her husband had already faded. Ivers had only paused for a second or two in stone cold silence without uttering a single word before the dignified man simply left her behind in the sitting room alone.

"Oh well, up we go." Rapunzel begins to feel the gaining weight of the no longer so buoyant from the personal snow flurry cloud bag that was full of dense slushy snow by now. Mainly due to the fact that Olaf had been napping rather than directing the snowflakes armed with his spoon, out from the several holes in the bottom of the canvas bag that Kristoff had strategically placed near the side bottom rear.

Up the long flight of stairs to the castle second floor, Rapunzel heaves the heavy bag, although the occupant in her bulging stomach was beginning to protest the workout.

"You put that heavy bag down, my girl! You are in no shape to cart that heavy thing up this long flight of stairs!" Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal, in a bossy motherly tone, physically takes charge of the large carpetbag from Rapunzel.

"But it's—! You shouldn't –" Rapunzel imagines how Olaf and Pascal must be being thrashed about as the big boned woman carelessly flops the carpetbag and its precious cargo about, thinking it only full of clothing, as most carpetbags were.

"Of course not, _minha dore menina!_ (My sweet girl!)" Gloria pats Rapunzel's red puffed out cheek tenderly, before screaming commandingly over her shoulder: " _Merido!_ " (Husband!) Come carry this bag for my friend here up to her room! _Rapidamente_ (Quickly!)"

"Yes, dear. I'm coming." A hothead with other men, and his brothers especially, Prince Peiter was a totally opposite softy when it came to his domineering Portuguese beauty of a wife. The broad shouldered, tall Prince with friendly mutton chops subserviently obeys her command, dutifully emerging from the Billiards Room to heft the snowman filled luggage with a surprised grunt.

"That's a lot of clothing you brought for a two-day visit, Princess. It's almost… cold as ice, too." Prince Peiter remarks, his eyes bulging at the unexpected chill emanating from the satchel as he carries the off-balance jiggling bag up the steps that Rapunzel and Gloria were traversing.

"Yeah… I'm growing them in… I mean! I didn't know which ones I would still fit in, you know, because of this." Rapunzel points at her enlarged stomach that was expanding every day, according to her tight skirt belts. "And that new cool-to-the-touch silk from Paris is all the rage in Corona this year." She answers the second query cryptically, feeling quite silly as she makes it up as she goes.

With a pasted smile on her face, Rapunzel wonders how Olaf and Pascal were faring, as the big muscled man, showing off his ample muscle to his oohing and ahhing wife, easily keeps shifting the carpetbag's weight around as he carries it swiftly up the stairs at a quick stepped pace.

If anyone was to glance inside the luggage, Olaf's face pieces were all inverted again, as Pascal holds his carpetbag sick stomach, his puke green tongue sticking out.

"So… Prince Peiter… Princess Gloria and the other princesses and I were discussing before… This morning, we were wondering… Egeskov is such a huge castle! It must have over fifty bedrooms! Do you brothers each still occupy the same rooms here, as you did in your youth when you visit now with your wives and families?" Rapunzel ventures the question, under Gloria's encouraging nods.

"Yes. We do pretty much keep the same rooms when we gather to visit father from our individual estates. On Christmas and Easter and birthday occasions like this and such. That room we just passed there was Mattias'. And this one here is Didrik's. Ivers' is the one down the hall, though he always preferred to sleep in the Rigborg room downstairs when he got older for some reason that we younger boys never figured." Honest and frank with his words, that had no underlying innuendo, Rapunzel instinctively felt she could trust Peiter, the more she conversed with him. "Kaleb's is the one closest to Father's at the opposite end of this corridor." The eighth-in-line Prince with the honest green eyes continues his own tour of Egeskov's second floor.

 _ **SPLAT SPLAT SPLATT!**_

Good thing no one was present down on the ground floor in Egeskov Castle's empty hallway below, as Olaf drops spoonfuls of sloshy snow to the ground that immediately melt into messy puddles across the marbleized floor.

"How very interesting that these rooms are all assigned by number order of you boys' births…So…Which one these rooms belonged to, say, your littlest brother, Prince Hans?" Rapunzel finally asks the question she'd been meaning to scrape up the courage to all day.

"Hans? You mean the Squirrel? Where did you hear about him? He hasn't lived here for years… Even as a kid he was rarely here, being shipped off to the orphan convent when he was like three or four years old, because Father couldn't stand the sight of him. And after that, he went off to _Søofficerskolen,_ the Naval Academy we all were subjected to." Peiter, obviously not a seaman himself, makes a sour face at the naval training he had to suffer his youth through, just because all royal princes attended, like it or not.

"Well, Hans seemed to like it. When he finally got back, after serving **_three_** consecutive tours of duty at sea, at the ripe old age of twenty-three – _showoff_ \- Father disowned him for some unsavory crimes against the Queen of Norway, after he had to represent us up there for her coronation. It was funny, Hans was the only brother who didn't get that terrible stomach virus that time, remember Luj? So Father had to let him be the one to go." Calling his wife by her pet nickname, Peiter speaks freely, never having much love lost for Hans. But he saw, as an honest man now, in retrospect, he and his brothers were pretty cruel to the Squirrel growing up.

"I think his room originally was on the third floor with the younger boys. Although, if I remember correctly, the twins conscripted his bedroom for their playhouse a long time ago, when he was shipped off to the convent. I remember when those whiny twins had me move all of his room's old baby furniture up to the Loft. I don't recall where he stayed when he graduated the Naval Academy. Maybe up there too. Lujza and I were already married and living in Portugal most of the time by then." Big, burly, outspoken Prince Peiter, when his temper did not get the better of him, really was one of the more decent fellows in the Southern Isles.

"Thanks for the tour, Prince Peiter. You and Gloria have been really sweet to this lonely girl." Rapunzel smiles up at the tall prince in appreciation, causing him to almost blush at her attention.

"You have to meet our three beautiful girls, Rapunzel! Lucina, Selina and Corina are with the nannies in the nursery above the Ladegården complex that their grandfather, the King, had built for the children. Of course, I must say, there is only one antique dollhouse among all of the play weapons, toy sandboxes and sports equipment. But I'm not complaining." But opinionated Princess Gloria was indeed complaining that her pair of precious little girls were not welcomed as much in this flagrantly male oriented household as if they had been strapping boys with the Y-chromosome.

"Ah, here we are, at the Music Room." Gloria Lujza directs Prince Peiter to open the door to reveal a room full of old Chippendale furniture, complete with a genuine intricately carved Chippendale antique square piano in the far corner.

"Obrigato, meo Querido." (Thank you, my darling.) Gloria says warmly as she points her husband to dump the bag to the ground near the door.

"Now Peiter, you go play billiards with your sore brothers and make up with them. And do not get into any more fights. At least not until after supper." The Portuguese Princess kisses her 37-year-old husband's bearded cheek, well aware of how difficult it was for her outspoken hothead love not to get into a fall-out with any of his numerous brothers, especially during the friendly match at the billiards table.

"Come and lie back on that pillowed settee there while I play for you, my girl, for these twenty minutes before dinner is served. I promise it will make you feel much better in no time. Believe me. I survived both of my pregnancies with good music ringing in my baby girls' ears. Boys may not be so keen on melodies. But I do not care. I would not exchange my girls for any dumb boy." That rebellious statement is accompanied with a laugh, as the bubbly older woman begins to play a rondo on the rosewood Chippendale style wooden square piano. Gloria plays a beautiful tender melody that indeed proved to quell Rapunzel's nausea.

"That is lovely, Gloria. Music really does help. Thank you." Rapunzel smiles as she rests her head back on the pillow of the carved wooden couch, and closes her eyes.

The Prussian princess was glad she came to meet these relatives of the extra large extended family that neither herself, nor Eugene ever envisioned before. But now that she was here, listening to what everyone around her had to say about the youngest boy she'd come to investigate about, in the heart of his competitive house, Rapunzel realized Hans, even in his darkest hour could not, and probably would never be, welcomed in Egeskov..

 _So, how could I ever dream of announcing_ _Eugene_ _'s questionable connection, when they don't even count one of their full-blooded as their own?_

The once lonely girl who longed for a family and a place to belong of her own, sighs in sad frustration that she would leave here in the morning, after wishing King Herbert good solicitude from Corona on his important 70th birthday, with little clue as to Hans' current whereabouts, nor hope of ever returning back here as part of the clan.

 _Just when I made so many new friends here whom I would love to call as family_ …

At present, Gloria plays Mozart's 'Andante', and Rapunzel lets the soft, uplifting classical piece sweep her concerns and anxieties away.

 _Eugene_ _must've taken Hans back home to_ _Corona_ _to patch the injured boy up. Maybe even to the 'Sew You Up Right' clinic. I bet those boys are fine and right as rain laughing it up with Father, back in the castle back home while Mother –_

"Hmmm…?! Elsa!..." Gloria fortunately was playing the fortississimo portion of the Andante rather passionately loud to overhear Olaf's mumbling spacey words emanate from the carpetbag on the floor beside Rapunzel's lounging divan.

"Olaf, shhh." The Corona Princess quietly puts a finger to her lips as she leans her head down into the satchel. There, a frozen with stretched out tail chameleon was trying to plug up and rezip the snowman's quarter inch remaining mouth opening that squeaks out again, more enthusiastically urgent:

"Elsa's here!" And Olaf's branchy digits point up and outward, toward the second floor Hall.

 _Elsa? She can't be here! She's back home with her folks in her North mountain palace, Olaf!_ _Silly snowman!_

Nonetheless, Rapunzel scrambles up to peek out the door as her hand plucks the blue-white frosted Pascal out of the bag.

At the far end of the long hallway Rapunzel could've sworn she glimpsed a black and white frilly maid with blonde hair just turning the corner to disappear up the servant's back stairwell.

The brown haired Princess exchanges a curious glance with her chameleon friend who shares a shivering shrug with her.

"Can't be." Shaking her head, Rapunzel whispers to Pascal as she warms the frozen lizard in the palm of her hand, pressing him against her skirt pocket inside as she buries the chattering teeth, cold-blooded creature against her warmth.

"I know Elsa is HERE." A pouty mouth zipped up Olaf mumbles incoherently to himself, snubbed that he's not believed, as he clearly senses his ice mistress friend so nearby that he could just hug her.

* * *

 _On the domestic side of_ _Egeskov_ _Castle_ _…_

Elsie the maid had, after an exhilarating first day in Egeskov, and most fascinating encounter with the King Denmark – AKA Hans' father – peeked in on him one more time to make sure that he was well in the doctor's care. Then she returned to finish her cleaning duty of the final rooms on this second floor.

Her busy mind now had the added interest angle of meeting this Royal ruler and witnessing the workings of his innermost heart at his most formidable moment.

Elsa liked King Herbert all the more for those weaknesses that made the fearsome tyrant that she had heard so many ill rumors about, well, _human_.

Sheltered, self-conscious Elsa of Arendelle, now just coming out her own shell finally, longed to understand all the triumphant frailties of the human heart, hot, cold, and any passion in between.

Particularly any emotion of the heart concerning a certain Vise Admiral Hans Westergaard.

 _I suppose, now that I've searched all of Egeskov, that I'll continue to_ _Corona_ _and pray that you're there. I am glad that I stopped by here though, to meet your father, at least. I no longer think that he's the monster anymore that everyone always makes him out to be… Papa will be surprised to hear. If I get up the courage to tell him what I've done! I think I'll leave in the morning, once I'm certain your Papa is out of the woods…_

 _With a beneficent heart, that was more than a little bit guilty for mildly disobeying her own dear parent and veering off the road to Corona and stopping off here in Egeskov first with her own secret mission in mind, Elsa still recalls that long stare of King Herbert at his long dead wife's portrait…_

 _In coming here, I think I understand a modicum of how you became you, Hans._

 _And I believe I'm falling in love with you a little more, too, every passing moment I learn more about you…_

Blissfully humming along with Mozart's Andante that someone was playing quite well on the piano in a room nearby, Elsa finishes her chambermaid chores at the fireplace grate and straightens the bedding of the last two rooms of the floor that she left before she was interrupted.

Her jobs complete, Elsa dashes down the hall into the servants' stairwell and up to the Loft where she and Daphne were sharing an attic room.

Elsa glides into the summer heated fifth floor attic room, quickly fixing her mussed hair and crooked apron ribbons after all that heavy lifting of the large bodied King back to his bed.

 _I think he liked me, even without knowing who I really am._

Her youthful pure heart soared at the thought that she would be accepted on her own merit by her young man's family. Elsa smiles at her reflection in the dusty mirror, pleased with herself that she had, quite unintentionally, made such a good first impression, with no one aware of her rank or status of high royalty whatsoever. Everyone here, including the King himself, thought her a completely normal girl.

 _Without knowing_ ** _what_** **** _I am…_

But her pleasant smile is turned upside down into a doleful doubting frown at her elegant looking fingernails at their bluish white tips brushing back her platinum ice sprinkled hair.

And Elsa remembers her own dear Papa's inheritance that ran through her very extreme blueblood.

 _Sigh_ … Her heart sinks just as swiftly as it rose at the memory of King Herbert's approving gaze that would no doubt turn sour if he knew of her ice magic's curse, as a dejected Elsa sits down hard on the bed.

"Oww!"

 _Who is sleeping in my bed?_

"Who are you?!" A guarded Elsa's whisper, looking in alarm down at the small pudgy boy under the covers of her designated bed, was as fiercely frigid as it was curtly curious. She jumps up to her high heels from the bed, ice surging from behind her flaring eyes.

"Sorry for scaring you, Miss. I'm Lukas. Pleased to meet you, Ms. Elsie. Mama said you were beautiful. Boy was she right!" The brown haired boy with the brilliantly cerulean blue eyes sits up from the bed and apologizes like quite the little gent as he charms the Ice Queen with his generous compliment.

"You're Daphne's little boy, Lukas." Elsa speaks aloud to herself the conclusion. "Forgive me for threatening you." The icy blonde hackles at the back of her surprised neck disseminate.

 _"_ She did tell me you were coming, so I shouldn't have been so surprised." Elsa tries to be congenial, shyly brushing back her tousled blonde braid that she begins free braiding self-consciously.

"Did you enjoy the ride here on Prince Hans some – I mean, Sitron?" The Ice Queen tries to make pleasant conversation with the small child, but the flustered young woman almost makes a mess of that, too.

Mostly because Hans' name was never far from her lips, one way or another.

 _Ahem!_

"Yes, ma'am! He sure is a good horse! It's like he knew the whole way here and back without a single direction from either me or Mama. When we got here, I groomed him and watered and fed him real good, too, before we put him up in the barn proper for you, Miss Elsie. Thanks for the ride!" Lukas praises Sitron glowingly.

"Sitron used to live here too for a while with his original owner, when he was a boy your age. A boy named Hans." Elsa explains, dissatisfied in the mirror so that she unbraids and then starts to re-braid her messy tail of hair before pinning it up back into her maid's frilly white cap.

"Oh, that boy again! I should've figured he liked horses from his drawings! They were swell. My new friends and I found his artwork sketchbook in the orphanage stables. Gee, I wish I kept it now to show you. But I gave it to my new friend Anna, because she wanted it more. It's funny, there was picture in that book that this little boy named Hans drew of a girl who had a long beautiful blonde braid like yours, Miss Elsie." Friendly and talkative even to strangers, Lukas, says to a blushing Elsa.

She knew Hans Westergaard's artistry quite well by now, and who the most common subject was she knew intimately as well.

Elsa reaches into her pocket to produce one of the homemade cookies that Daphne had wrapped up into her pocket for her to snack on all the while she worked.

Problem was, Elsa had been so busy cleaning and fetching and folding sheets, never mind assisting the sickly, elderly King in his plight, that she didn't have time, nor appetite to stop for a bite to eat all day. Even a sweet tasty chocolate chip macaroon treat such as these.

Nor did she return to this room to take a sip of the glass the milk that was, by now, warm. It was still there where Daphne left it in a tall glass on Elsa's bedside table awaiting her to take a break all day.

"Care to have some fresh milk and cookies?" Elsa offers with a kind look in her blue eyes.

"Your mama made them herself, and they're really wonderfully delicious." Elsa never thought herself compassionate enough to humor small children nor to make quick friends, but the boy with the contagious smile was easy to befriend.

"I love milk and cookies! Let's share it!" The charming young lad also possessed a generous soul beyond his six short years as Lukas takes the large cookie treat and cracks in half, giving Elsa the bigger portion as he hungrily downs his in a flash.

"Oh this piece is much too big for me." With a smile, Elsa breaks off one dainty bite for herself and chews it carefully as she hands the other piece back to Lukas. She then takes a sip of the glass of milk that she herself had milked from the stingy cows earlier today. But it was too warm to be that enjoyable.

"I know. Do you like your milk… **_cold_** … Like I do?" The Ice Queen asks with the mischievous glint in her eyes, dissatisfied with the room temperature dairy.

"Sure do. But in the summer, warm milk is nice to help you take naps during the day." Always an optimist, the easy to please child sees the good side of every thing in life.

"But I have a feeling you prefer it _ice_ cold… Am I right?" As she says the magic word, the Queen of Arendelle cryokinetically forms a small ice cube in her artistic purplish blue pale hand in the shape of Sitron, the fjord horse. She proudly displays the intricate work of ice before Lukas' stunned amazement.

 ** _CLINK_**!

Elsa makes Sitron go for a dive into the glass of warm milk, his horse head bobbing up and down in the liquid's white milky surface to Lukas' applause and delight, his eyes full of childlike wonderment.

"This is amazing!" A sweaty, hot looking Lukas claps and bounces up and down on his giddy feet in curiosity at this magical winter weather in summer and indoors polar wind that whistles through the attic loft's stifling heat index.

"You're like the magical Snow Queen, Elsie!" Remembering the fairytale story, Lukas jumps onto the bed and dances about as a giggling Elsa easily creates a controlled light flurry to playfully tickle snowflakes on his boyish making of a proud Roman nose of a Westergaard.

"No, I've met her. She's a very great lady, but of a much older variety than I." With a touch of vanity. Elsa says with an almost haughty pride of her youth that the age-old Snow Queen's wisened old years could not claim.

"I'm the _Ice_ Queen." With more than a twinge of artfully swaggering superciliousness, Elsa masterfully forms ice cube statuettes of all her favorite people in the world in the blink of a snapped icy finger. Papa and Mama, Anna and Kristoff, Sven, Olaf and the snowgies and Marshmallow, Kai and Gerda and Johanne. Rapunzel and Eugene.

And a special last one, that she pays special attention to the delicate features of, was reserved for a handsome young man named Hans…

Lukas's high-spirited tongue sticks out to taste the fresh fallen snowflakes that tickled his giddy nose. To a nostalgic Elsa, it was a sweet reminder of exactly how Anna reacted when she first experienced how beautiful the winter could be, when seen through the eyes of a sweet child…

 _I wonder how you're doing in Arendelle, Anna? It's a big responsibility, overseeing a country. But I believe in you. Although, I miss having your shining light around on my new grand adventure…_

 _Somehow, though, I don't think you'd approve…_

Elsa smiles, marveling at the extraordinary irony of God's masterful plan and the independence He's given her to stretch her icy wings, and fly as high as her light of hope and dreams of love can take her…

* * *

Happy Independence Day, Frozen friends!

Ba-Boom! There be fireworks going off here in storyland this week! *:* Just in time for the 4th of July!

Completing Book One of "Frozen Again: Faith, Hope & Love" (note the title change) was a big bold move for me here! But I felt that part of the adventure story arc was past its conclusion point, and originally intended to end it there.

So, with so many more openings to explore in the upcoming chapters, we decided (finally! ^_*) to make a sequel, rather than drag this first book out a hundred or so chapters!

That done, I'm able now in my mind to expand the characterizations of some new faces to the story and complex plot lines, and not feel rushed to give the drama closure. Now it's time for endless possibilities! ^0^

We started "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" (the next line of the oh-so-fitting and inspirational II Corinthians Bible verse) soon after the battle with that ferocious, relentless sea monster had been defeated by our courageous, intrepid and brave heroes and heroines. (and waving fond farewell to the Snow Queen, Ragi, & the cast of The Little Mermaid, who made major cameo appearances, at younger ages before their princess movies)

Which, I think, always makes a good end to a novel, even if it's a cliffhanger for some of our Frozen stars!

I'd love to hear some reviews for the sequel book's chapters so far and this newest chapter, too, FF friends!

And if you haven't favorited or followed this renewed "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love", please do so again. That way you'll get the updates for the new chapters to come! And your reviews and patronage will encourage readers to keep following the adventures of Helsa, Kristanna, their Frozen family & Tangled cousins Eupunzel!

So now we get to meet Hans' dozen big brothers at last! The wives I already researched and put together a montage of paintings of some real live royal princesses of that era. But the men, I wanted to keep Hans (and Eugene ^-*) in somewhat brotherly resemblance with. They were quite a handful to script with only vague reference to their looks! But it helped that, after I mentioned this difficulty in remembering which Southern Isles Prince had what facial feature, or color hairdo, my sweet & talented big sis quick CG-ed their faces (wonderfully different, yet related, like family should be!) and the King's after I described them, so I get a better visual of whom I'm writing about. And they came out so well! Exactly how I envisioned them! Now this scatterbrained writer can _'See the Light'_ and remember what each of these 12 brothers' new faces look like, right off easily!

She's an amazing intuitive artist, my girl Setsuna! And the bestest, nicest, most talented big sister ever to put up with my insanity! I thank God for her presence in my lucky life everyday! ^_^

Thanks again for supporting this nutty authoress in her story adventures! The next chapter's already half written – and it's a blast from the present and flashback past! SO! We'll see you next week for that one, God-willing!

God bless America!

Pop goes the Fourth! Have fun tonight fireworking!

Thanks!

HarukaKou


	12. Chapter 12 - God Help the Outcasts

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 12**

 **"God, Help the Outcasts"**

 _Not too many nautical miles away, on the extreme clipper ship, the Sjette Doight…_

"I've _…ergh…_ Almost _… argh…_ Got it, Kid!" After many hours spent in total darkness, brandishing his indelible skills as a master lock pick, Flynn Rider had been feeling his way around their restraints with Hans' trusty nib pen. The thief had not only freed himself of the tough and rusty tumbler bolt ankle shackles and handcuffs that had kept him confined beside a loudly napping and snoring Aged P, but he also had finagled the padlocks around Hans' skinny legs from their bondage to the cage bars.

 _Now to climb up and loosen those blasted ropes holding your arms up there!_

"Ooh, that's gonna smart for a while. Ignore my stunning posture, Lillebror, but this old man needs a few minutes to fully recover." Bent in an awkward, none too gallant position, Eugene stands up from his sore bum that he had been crouched down on his haunches to the hard rigid splintering plank floor for far too many hours working his craft.

"Hmm? Cat got your tongue, Handsome? You usually have something witty to say about my misfortunes."

The silence was driving Eugene a little batty all while he - _single-handedly, mind you_ \- was using his professional know-how to free the lot of them for the past few hours.

And with virtually no companionable chatter from the other two.

By the time the master locksmith had freed himself of his own encumberment, Aged P had fallen into a deep sleep ages ago and Hans had zoned out a while back during their captivity, as well.

That fact was starting to eat at Eugene. So he kept talking to himself to fill the airwaves and make up for his anxiety.

Flynn Rider straightens up his aching back to stumble towards his kid brother affixed to the cage wall. Giving the tough task a grimace, Eugene starts to work on figuring how to release Hans and get him down.

The thief immediately goes to work on unshackling Hans' feet from the bars. That thankless job done, Eugene reaches up to un-rope Han's tied up wrists, next. Despite his right arm that still contained that pirate's bullet in it smarting like the Dickens as he raises it high above his head, Eugene has to also constantly steady Hans' body that was hanging up solely by his arms, so the redhead's own weight would not cut the hemp rope into the fettered man's already scathed wrists any further.

"How do you always get us into these kinds of fine messes, Sideburns? You're like a lightning rod for trouble. Is it the red hair? Because I've heard stories of people with red hair that would make your skin crawl –" Flynn pauses mid-goad, his flustered face buried into Hans' velvety navy blue jacket's side jerking back from where he was holding up and balancing the terribly thin captive Dane's dangling body.

"—How is it, after all this sweaty atmosphere down in this dank dungeon you still mange to smell like some high class cologne? Did that Queenie _douse_ your naval issue uniform in her favorite musk before she endowed it to you?" Working over both their heads whilst keeping Hans' body suspended best he can, Eugene murmurs with his face buried in Hans' navy jacket, bitterly teasing as he stretches up on his fully erect legs to reach the ropes corded thickly 'round and 'round the highest cell bar of the cage's roof.

"I do admire your deliberate intention to occupy my mind on more pleasant allusions, at the same time I commend your verve and drive to free me for an escape, Storbror. However, there is something I must share with you before you continue." Hans calmly speaks when he feels Eugene's broad shouldered form press against his chest to prop him up against the cage's iron bars.

The cunning older brother was too busy working on slicing that silver nib pen across the ropes high up over their heads at Hans' wrist bondage to pay much attention.

"Ah! So you decide to grace me with your company at last, Lillebror! Long time, no speak." Eugene murmurs, in close proximity to Hans' ear as his nimble hands, extended upwards, were employed at slicing at the thick ropes and not Hans' slender wrists.

"I have been contemplating just that magnetism for trouble I have had the whole of my life that you have just referred to. But there is something quite pressing that you must know first." Hans says, his voice perfectly calm and rational versus Eugene's swearing, heavy breathing tactics as he slaves over cutting his little brother down.

"Oh yeah? If you didn't notice – _argh_ – I'm a little preoccupied right now for one of our deep soul-searching tête-à-têtes." Eugene grumbles in his saucy way as he and that nib pen were just about to slice through the last thick strand of the hemp.

"It may be essential."

 _Sigh_. "Okay, okay! What's – _Argh! Damn splintery old rope_! – on your mind, Kid?" Eugene looks up into Hans face with a perplexed gaze momentarily.

"I am afraid I have absolutely no sensation left in my arms, and very little in my legs, either."

"Huh?"

And just as the words spill from Hans' dry mouth, his liberated body form's entire weight, with no balance or equilibrium that mobilized arm and leg appendages gave a human being's center of gravity, collapses onto his unsuspecting big brother, dually crashing both young men down to the cell floor in a tangled pile.

"Gee. Thanks for the warning. _Argh_." Eugene squeaks out the high-pitched painful barb through clenched teeth. He lays there pinned beneath Hans for a second or two in spent pain before pushing the young man's meager dead weight aside to crush a snorkeling awake Aged P instead.

"Forgive me, Storbror. I am so very sorry for being so useless an excuse for a man, and having been this overconfident to drag you into danger in a purely family matter of vengeance, chiefly directed at me." Unable to move, Hans sinks into a rare depression, never before in such a counterproductive state where his agile legs and sword arm failed him so completely.

"Well…I see that I've worn that cocksure arrogance of yours down a peg enough for you to see the light and admit the truth at last, Red Devil Boy." Count Rügen's evil sniveling voice chooses to enter the dark bilges of his extreme clipper ship at this moment.

The wicked flunky of the Royal house of Egeskov, accompanied by several of his guardsman, stalks purposefully towards the cage cell with a gloat etched on his scarred features. Rügen glowers in full, utter contempt for his nemesis.

"Although, I believe I underestimated this thieving refuse's skill at the sleight-of-hand. Pity. I'll have to deduct him of those problematic vocational hazard appendages that defy simple intelligence to comply to a greater adversary." Dark in every possible way - body, mind, and soul - Master Rügen brushes back his gray-black mustache while one of the brutish guards unlocks the cell door. The other three big musclemen claim Eugene's struggling form from the ground to drag him out kicking and screaming.

The men hold his arms by the wrists out to where their sadistic leader was waiting with his sharpened sword drawn to inflict severe corporal punishment.

"Hey! Don't! Stop!" But Flynn Rider, trying frantically to flee as he might with the valued treasure of his hands, could not overpower the trio of hostile henchman holding him down to a kneeled position, pulling his head back by his hair.

"Master Rügen! Wait! You are correct! You have always been correct… I am nothing but a child of the devil! I was born as a curse on my sainted mother and will never surmount that stigma. Please do not take my misdeeds out on this good man." Hans, with monumental force of will, props himself up on his undead arms to cry out this plea for Eugene's precious hands to be saved.

"Give me one good reason why not to smite him for associating with the likes of you, Devil Boy?" Count Rügen pauses in his sword's punitive decision to chop off Eugene's hands, if just for the chance to toy with Hans.

"He is the Prince Consort of Corona."

The wicked sword instructor starts to put two and two together of what he has heard of the impractical kingdom of Corona on the royal grapevine over these past years.

"… Yes…that's right. I did hear of the foolish lost Princess belittling her Royal family by dragging a common criminal into their fold. So, this is the illustrious sneak thief Flynn Rider turned docile palace pet. Kept man _Prince_ Eugene, is it?" Count Rügen of Württemberg, turns his blade to gently lift Eugene's chin up to get a better look into his eyes, leaning down to taunt his victim right in the face as he continues to torment Hans, who was rattling the bars desperately behind him.

"Of course, letting him _live_ to tell the tale of this castigatory treatment in the superior name of Egeskov when he returns back to Corona, may have worse consequences than simply killing him now…Or perhaps cutting out his over-used tongue would serve the purpose, either way. And torment you, for having no witness against me as well."

Eugene, his appendages and body strapped down in every other way, lashes out at this atrocious vile creature with all he had left.

"You wanna see some tongue action, Scarface!? Leave the Kid alone!"

 ** _SPITT!_**

Flynn Rider spits a great wad of hot saliva right into the face of this ugly, scarred villain of vengeance.

When the Count wipes his rage back, about to backhand this two-bit thief with jaw-cracking malice, he finds himself staring directly into a pair of golden-amber eyes full of insolent rebellion…

 _Those eyes!_

The vile, bearded man shrinks back in shock of who he sees in the reflection of Prince Eugene's wide-eyed pupils glaring back at him. If Humperdinck Rügen had a conscience, it would have definitely been pricking, as his intent gaze zeroes into Flynn Rider's amber gold pupils that stare adamantly defiant back up at him…

* * *

 ** _War-torn_** ** _France_** ** _in reconstruction, Summer 1817…34 years ago…_**

Forty-five-year-old King Herbert of Egeskov Denmark had been attending the Bourbon Restoration and then the Concordat Summit of European leaders and the Holy See in Paris over the last series of months. After the unsettling unrest in French society of the Napoleonic Wars this past decade, the people of this region needed some well-due peace.

While the powerful King of the Southern Isles was here in Paris though, his own heart didn't have any peace in it. Rather only derision and defeat.

Ever since that mysterious ice shard from the Snow Queen's shattered mirror of good and evil, unbeknownst to him, had penetrated his eye when Herbert was a younger man just before the turn-of-the-century, it unleashed a selfish drive in him to conquer and dominate the lands.

And that drive flourished into an obsession for the ambitious King in the form of procreating numerous children – namely boys – with his betrothed Scottish wife.

Stepping from the _l'Assemblée Nationale_ , the National Assembly building in Paris, France - King Herbert had convinced his right hand man Rügen and his royal escort entourage to leave him to his own devices for once, as the distraught King wished to be alone with his thoughts.

Walking around the busy Paris boulevards to try to dislodge that ice cold dagger, which in moments of personal difficulty and self-irritation pierced his chest, until his frost coated lungs almost made it unbearable to breathe.

 _ **Cough. Cough. Cough!**_

The disoriented King, at a loss for oxygen that stifled the workings of his mind until it blacked out for a few moments, soon found himself lost in the foreign city's back alley streets of Paris' 8th arrondissement.

And it was here, in his moment of weakness and need, that the King of Denmark met _her_.

That's when a beautiful dark-skinned gypsy Roma girl, dancing in on a warm summer breeze, whirled her translucent pale orchid scarves around Herbert's already spinning head.

The exotic beauty had been dancing her provocative moves to catch travelers' attentions and sell her colorful wares along the crowded Quartier des Champs-Élysées until she ducked into this alleyway to regain her breath.

And a speechless King Herbert, try as he might, could not tear his eyes away from her.

"You look out of place around here, _Monsieur_. Are you feeling unwell?" The vivacious girl with beautifully large, all enveloping golden eyes paused in her rhythmic swaying to ask in genuine concern for this fellow human being, shaky on his feet.

"Perhaps a handmade rosary, blessed by the holy sisters of the Notre Dame itself, would help you to feel better?" The French gypsy woman with the stunning golden-amber eyes was the only one in the busy, bustling streets to have the audacity to stop and speak to this intimidating tall, dark man as he was making his way across the town.

"No… I'm fine." The proud man, who was obviously of high rank and stature well above this humble street entertainer/ peddler, had answered dismissively, never meeting her worried gaze.

"You don't look fine. You look lost, Monsieur. Where are you from? You're obviously not from gay Paris. Because a fine gentleman such yourself certainly does not belong in this seamier side of the City of Lights. There are thieves about everywhere looking for easy marks such as you." With a wary glance around at the eyes that she knew were peering at both of these unlikely acquaintances from every shadowy corner of this sunset, the slender young beauty asked.

"Easy mark?! Who do you think you are referring to, young lady?!" Indignant King Herbert scoffed, looking down his proud nose at this common street riffraff calling him out condescendingly.

"You. In all your finery. Where have you come from?"" With a patronizing smirk, the shrewd, honest woman traced up and down at his comely tourist's well-pressed luxurious suit and grand regal pocket watch that was protruding from his affluent jacket on a golden chain.

"Step aside, please." Is all the perplexed King can counter. But as the weakened man attempts to bypass her and enter into the main boulevard from the alley they were in close quarters with one another within, he stumbles again.

"Whoa-oh. I've got you." The gypsy girl steadied the silent stoic man's wobbly gait as he tried to walk away from her. But the eighteen-year-old young woman with the long, ebony black, wavy hair persisted in keeping pace alongside him.

"Egeskov, Denmark." Looking into her exotic eyes for the first time, the haughty man imparted this terse information to this annoying simple young woman with the rapacious curiosity to dig into his private affairs.

She rolled her eyes up to the moonlit sky at dusk. "I only meant, which hotel are you currently staying at? Because you're probably going the wrong way."

"Listen, carefully. I am not interested in purchasing any of your silly beads or flimsy scarves, Mademoiselle. Please leave me be!" The tall, dark and handsome, dizzy man was growing angry, irritated at his own failing lungs that were slowing him down. Nonetheless, Herbert stubbornly continued to attempt to make his way, as quickly as possible, to the other end of the alley.

The Danish King could see his hotel, the Palais Bourbon, on the other side of the river gauche of the Seine in front of Pont de la Concorde. But in his winded lightheadedness he misjudged that the partially renovated, unfinished bridge that only led to the river Seine's rickety banks, could lead him across to there.

"Whoa! Where do you think you are going!? I've been trying to tell you, it's dangerous at that end! " The young Roma gypsy girl blatantly pulled her sultry bare arms around the King's chest and halted the dizzy man before he tumbled off the edge of the war-torn, not yet finished section of this run-down bridge quay.

Kneeling the pair of them to the pier's edge safety, overlooking the sparkling in the moonlight River Seine, the lone gypsy girl embraces the shivering, cold man's head to hers, rubbing at his quavering with uncontrollable coughing chest until he was able to stand up again.

"Perhaps I do require your assistance. It appears that I have lost my way to the Palais Bourbon. Please, I will pay you to direct and escort me there, Madamoiselle." King Herbert finally relented his confusion. Feeling especially worn and run down, his mind had been especially distracted all this trip so far, his lungs particularly tight to match his worry.

The golden-amber eyed, dark skinned young woman with the continual smirk on her face paused before speaking again. Her hands came to rest on her shapely hips while she assessed his credibility as a trustworthy traveling companion. A girl with her head on her shoulders these days, could never be too careful.

And as her wide eyes in the dusky light gazed up into his, this orphan girl who lived on Paris' streets by her wits alone since her family had passed in the Great Plague of 1815, intuitively saw a deep sorrow there that could not be merely borne of physical exhaustion or pain.

 _Why are your eyes so sad?_

"Beware, Monsieur! Do not trust her! That girl is a known thief!" An older Frenchman who was hawking his own silk wares suddenly came up from behind the pair just getting acquainted.

"Wait! Anton! You know I'm not –" She indignantly protests, when another man who was her rival jewelry street vendor added to that first salesman's coarse accusations.

"She always preys upon men with her sultry dancing in the streets and lures them in with the cunning tricks of her fluttering golden eyes!" A big bodied, thick necked, tall strapping lad, with displayed muscles the size of a barge adds his oiliness to the flames of slander.

"How would you know, Jean-Bien?! I never let you—" The 18-year-old young woman began to defend her questioned probity from this boorish lout, but the surrounding horde's accusations drowned out her denials.

"Ze Gypsy girl is nothing but trouble! And all her goods have been stolen from the Notre Dame holy sisters!" Another man cried out falsified claims, based on prejudice and made up lies.

"She is a witch of the devil and should be run out of Paris!" One or two younger males whom the Gypsy girl had denied other favors before were indeed, coming out of the termite chewed woodwork shadows with their taunts.

"Oui! Before her Gypsy kind infect the rest of our citizens with the plague they brought from the continent interior!" An old hag yelled out shrilly, pointing a decrepit bent finger at the, by now, cowering young girl.

"Gypsy vermin! Worse than the rats, because at least we can eradicate those without the gendarme arresting us!" When a fifth man screamed out his epithet of racial injustice, the riotous crowd gathering around started to push and throw rocks to bully the frightened young woman who was an outcast in her own city, King Herbert of Denmark felt something rise in him.

As the leader of a proud nation, and a man of courage, he felt it was his duty to take a stand.

The gallant aristocrat does not need to raise his voice for his point to be heard. By simply speaking in a low foreboding tone, his words were even more fearsome for the cold passion behind his flaring eyes as he took a protective stance in front of the sparsely clothed, dark-haired, tanned skin young woman.

"Tell me, what did you fight your French Revolution for? Latent prejudice, distrustful bigotry, narrow-minded intolerance? Was that not what you accused the aristocratic hierarchy of wielding against you? After all the fighting and stench of death, the screams of war, is it not time to embrace independence from the selfish bonds that kept you captive?" King Herbert was quite an eloquent speaker when it came to the politics of the European region. Within that cold ice mirror shard in his heart that held in its infinite crystal a piece of all that is good and evil in the world, he could, at moments, glimpse both sides.

For the honor of this outcast young woman who had dared to move aside the broken remnants of his hardened heart to let in her warmth, he could articulate all that was good.

Some frightened of his commanding authority, some unable to give any reasonable retort, most swayed by his truthful words, the crowd dispersed, dropping their rocks and stones that had been aimed at harming this orphan gypsy girl.

"Thank you." She whispered, impressed by his righteous eloquence, in awe of his honorable convictions and, though she was unaware of it at the moment, instantly falling in love with his majesty.

"This is what the conference I am attending is all about. Bringing all the peoples of France together. Not only a few." Quietly Herbert said, a far-off look in his eyes gazing over the ocean as he expressed the heartfelt sentiment with a deep passion he had not felt in a long time.

"If you still want me to…I will help you find your way through the hustle and bustle at this busy hour to your hotel. By the way, my name is Agnès da Cavalier. What's yours?" She says openly, still half expecting the tall lofty spoken foreigner to refuse to give her a justified answer. Because most men, in her young experience, were only made of words.

"Kin—"The King of Denmark begins to respond in his usual supercilious, uppity manner. But something about her exotic, extra-large, inquisitive eyes and wide teasing smile, disarmed him to want to be as genuine and open with her, as she was with him.

"My name is Herbert… Herbert Westergaard. You may simply call me Herbert." The arrogant King of Denmark forgoes for once in his conceited life, his important title, belittling himself.

"Oh, good. I like that. As long as we're on a first name basis. You may call me Agnès." The cocky girl, elated that this noble man would be treating her as an equal and not recognizing him for who he was at all, answered with an irreverent twist to her lip and a naughty squint in her eye that the King found most intriguing. No one else he had ever encountered had ever treated or spoken to this Danish royal man, who was born to be sovereign, and demanded he was treated as one, with such casual comportment.

"Follow me, Handsome Herbert. I know this city like the back of my hand." Irreverent Agnès flipped her palms before his deep, sad eyes, then waved her magical talented hands, full of flowing gauzy colorful silks and chiffons and her handmade strings of beads before this handsome stranger's bedazzled eyes.

There was something about this mysterious, cool man with the dark brown hair and profound blue eyes that this hot-blooded young woman wanted to know so much more about, like an indescribable force neither could control drawing them together.

* * *

It had been several months since the 1817 Paris Concordat summit of European leaders meeting after the Napoleonic War ended had wrapped up with some degree of success.

But for King Herbert of Egeskov, his business in the City of Lights was far from over.

As the months of European realignment peace talks went by, it brought King Herbert back to the city of Paris many times. The romantic City of Lights relentlessly called him to seek out this singular gypsy maiden who could always take his anxieties out of himself and warm his pierced, cold heart, melting it a little more each time.

Herbert had returned to see the sights of this vibrant city as Agnès first suggested. However, trying to forget his problems back home, the more time he spent with this effervescent young maiden, viewing the sights and sounds of Paris, the dancing gypsy girl's flowing movements, laughing-eyes and straightforward repartee beguiled his tense, demoralized senses until they could stand his self-imposed solitude no longer.

Mainly because this devastatingly handsome monarch, who had an insatiable drive, since that mirror shard of ice spurred his draconian youth, to yearn to take over Europe and the world beyond by means of genetic propagation, had recently received some devastating news back home.

The tall. dark and handsome ruler with a guilty heart had visited the golden eyed gypsy girl named Agnès whom he had yielded to a liaison with, during the most discouraging moments in his life.

The ravishing young woman of great feeling and lust for life, Agnès da Cavalier, the Roma gypsy girl, was at first unaware that the attractive man was still married. She believed from his grief stricken words and desolate attitude that his beloved wife Louise, whom he loved dearly, had recently passed away.

Leading her to believe that _little_ detail in all their conversations, the stoic, tightlipped Danish man also didn't tell Agnès that he was the King of Denmark, either.

But the young, impressionable girl had already been swept off her feet by this confident attractive foreigner's devoted attention and winsome charms so desperately, that she was too head over heels madly-in-love with him to care.

It was not long into their relationship, that it all too soon turned from innocent friendly encounters of simple teasing flirtations during the fun days, into something far more deep and wildly passionate by romantic nights.

But the devout Catholic girl, who had fallen into a deep, fervent love for this dashing stoic figure of an inherently striking man who had showered the lonely dark-haired beauty with careful suave compliments and excessive flowers and expensive gifts, could not help but finally succumb to the gorgeous, impressive older man's vulnerable, sad-eyed charms.

Since that first moment she was being hounded by the rowdy men for branding her as a thief and worse, the tall dark brown haired gentleman who had emerged from the political conference to listlessly wander the streets, had found a new vigor as he used his aristocratic eloquence to stop their senseless cruel behavior with a single speech that changed their hearts.

Though she was truly penitent for the irresponsible act of not waiting for wedlock, the eighteen-year-old young girl, who had no mother of her own due to the deadly plague that had swept over the continent the past decade, now gazed down at her full with child stomach.

Agnès had hope that her widower lover would snap out of his depression of his first wife's loss and make her and her child a new family of his own.

She knew that it would have been better, especially in the eyes of the holy church, that she had married the classy man of little words, whom she had taken under her effusively talkative wing with tender comfort once he had shown her his inner kindness.

But each time she broached the subject, Herbert assuaged the conversation.

Until one final time, after an especially demanding assignation, she felt a bit bold as to her pregnant infirmity that had kept the lively emotional Agnès indoors all day long enough.

Unable to stand or ply her dancing nor her wares in the street openly anymore, lest be noticed, Agnès insisted, as the holy sisters she had confessed to in her Notre Dame Cathedral advised.

One of the nuns who had become the poor outcast girl's friend from Agnès's daily visitation to the church often visited the expectant young mother in the lonely days when her love was overseas in Denmark.

The Roma girl told him that night that she would not mind moving from Paris to the Southern Isles, as long as they could be together as husband and wife. Even if she was half his age and not part of his high societal class, Agnès believed that somehow, through their love, she could try to make him a suitable wife and he could give their child a proper home and upbringing so they could be a happy family.

But amidst Agnès' fiery, persistent demands, Herbert finally had to admit that the beloved wife he had expressed to this gypsy girl that he had ' _lost_ ' was indeed still alive back home in Egeskov Castle in Denmark's Southern Isles, where he was King of the land.

And that meant their relationship, though she had helped him through the darkest hours that King Herbert of the Southern Isles had ever seen, would never be able to graduate into anything more than a passing affair, nevermind holy matrimony.

Over the months of negotiations and signing treaties where the emotion littered man oft frequented her loft apartment for soothing consolation, the empathic girl had convinced her mind that her handsome Herbert was genuine in his affection for her. Although, deep in her heart, she knew that his devotion was still, and always would be, partly owned by his first love.

Herbert tried to explain, but it broke a passionately weeping Agnès' pure heart to hear his true confession when the Danish King finally realized his dutiful position.

Because hers wasn't the only heart this fine-looking, majestic regal ruler had broken.

His wife of many years and a dozen sons had almost lost this most recent pregnancy due to many complications while he had been away attending to European affairs.

Queen Louise had been producing son after son for her adored King for the past two decades, and she was now a shadow of herself for all the lifeforce she had given up for so many children. By this eleventh pregnancy, the woman had become so frail and weak that the Royal physicians all agreed that these twins she had just borne in a difficult delivery should be her last attempts at motherhood.

But the gentle hearted Scotswoman with the long ringlet curls of flaring red hair that had lost their gleaming shine and bounce many childbearing years ago, still wished to only please her husband, whom she loved unconditionally.

Though of late, Louise had felt that her husband's obsession to conquer the world had become greater than his love for her. Just as his love for her, year-by-year, had grown more weary. It seemed that he loved her ability to give him sons more than her spirit to give him her love.

As an important European leader during this vital transition era for the war-ravaged continent, King Herbert of Denmark was required, despite his personal heartache, to partake in these month by month diplomatic summits in Paris.

As intelligent as she was beautiful, Queen Louise could clearly see that wanderlust develop in his stern, steel blue eyes each time he left Egeskov for the continent after the terrible news of her incapacity to produce him more heirs was issued.

So when a wavy, long dark-haired, dark-skinned beauty danced enticingly before the lonely Danish Royal ruler's despondent, distraught eyes, she made him forget all of his worries back home.

And the outcome was inevitable.

When each time the King returned home to his castle from France, kept in a separate bedroom from his wife yet under her physician's recovery, the empathetic Scottish beauty could sense in his attitude, his manner and behavior that her Herbert had taken a mistress in Paris.

But what was killing Louise inside more was to know that she no longer contented him as his wife.

* * *

After several months' worth of secret flirtations and clandestine meetings by night to the underprivileged gypsy girl's backstreet _pied-à-terre-_ her small temporary city lodging - King Herbert, in his lonesome weakness, had sired yet another offspring to add to his supposedly complete collection of an even dozen back home.

But this thirteenth unlucky, illicit love-child produced could never be recognized as anything other than what it was.

 _His bastard._

A tearful Agnès was contrite enough to send Herbert away and back to his wife and kingdom, with nothing more than a sorrowful smile farewell and a final wave of her colorful kerchief. The gentle hearted girl was devout in her faith enough to carry her illegitimate child to term with no hope of her baby having a father to call his own.

' _It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.'_ Agnès clung to that Shakespearean outlook and her deep belief that God would bless the outcasts of this world, even the sinners who had gone astray.

For what crime did this poor baby boy commit just for being born to this crooked world by the reckless stolen sentiments of his confused parents - a hurting man seeking comfort from a compassionate woman whose heart was only yearning for love?

* * *

King Herbert, with a heavy heart still held remnants of that shard shattered ice mirror that displayed all the good and evil of the world to him, realized a little late that he could not deny the abiding love he had forsaken back home of his wife Louise.

She had somehow recognized his infidelity, knowing her Herbert inside and out after fifteen years of uncomplaining marriage and almost just as many sons to selflessly give him year after year in childbearing for his lofty dream of conquering the world by propagation.

And she would patiently bear even that humiliation and heartache, with the tender prayer to God for her love to find his lost way back to her.

Now, as for Count Rügen, King Herbert's distant cousin who had come to be the royal monarch of Denmark's invaluable right hand man, the ruthless twenty-something-year-old retainer of the Egeskov estate was not so trusting in a higher Deity.

Rügen, who considered himself extraordinary due to his polydactyly congenital physical anomaly, had his six fingered digits into every aspect of King Herbert's life for years now. This cunning cousin had manipulated himself into the kingdom to be the obsequious personal attendant to the King, until no other subordinate or advisor was necessary. It was perhaps due to this toady, yes-man of royal lineage that King Herbert's ambition to dominate and conquer had festered and flourished in his prime to such a fever pitch degree.

When the scheming man, repulsed by the gypsy female's audacity to seduce his King, finally uncovered her fullness of child, Rügen knew he would have to take this disgusting matter into his own six-fingered hands, lest the imprudent King come to shame and ruination.

Since the King's wife of many years could no longer physically comply to his demands, could no longer submit to his intimate touches, a stalking Rügen had discovered that the vulnerable, driven King's distraught emotions had retreated to unconsciously search for another's sympathetic arms and indulgent eyes for comfort.

Those same exotic amber gold eyes of the breathtaking gypsy girl who glared at Rügen defiantly on that fateful night had been seared into the Count's unapologetic mind since that day thirty-three years ago…

* * *

Back home in Egeskov, the Danish monarch had silently sworn at the vigil bedside of his terribly ill wife with a broken heart that he would never again return to France, nor ever see that enchantress gypsy named Agnès, who mesmerized him away from his true love Louise, if she would recover.

However, months later, Herbert had enough of a noble man of conscience in him yet to send his cousin and right hand man who could keep all the King's secrets and whom he considered trustworthy, Count Rügen, to see to Agnès and her newborn child's welfare. Herbert made it clear that neither should ever want for anything, with at least the funds and wherewithal he could provide for them from afar.

But King Herbert was unaware of how the deceptively darkest six fingered cousin's soul could be.

Count Humperdinck Rügen had assured the King that he would ' _take care of things in_ _Paris_ _'_ in his ruler's stead. The Danish King, having come to terms with his sickly, convalescing wife, Queen Louise, had agreed for his faithful servant to take his place.

Traveling to Paris upon his fast Sjette Doight clipper ship, Count Rügen had arrived at the lonely Gypsy girl's abode.

Count Rügen, after planting seeds of guilt and doubt in King Herbert's mind subliminally, had arrived at Agnès the gypsy's _pied-à-terre_ in place of the expected King on one rendezvous night.

Only to find it empty. The windows leading to the terrace were flung open wide as the curtains flipped wildly in the stormy night's stiff breeze.

The keen-eyed young mother had seen this wicked dark man before, skulking around Herbert like a parasitic insect hovering over its symbiont awaiting fresh prey.

For months she saw this dark man and the dirty glances he glared up at her in her third story window at her _pied-à-terre._ With a mother's instinct that sensed his vile intent, agile Agnès had fearlessly fled from her garret loft, just as undaunted of climbing heights, even with a three-month-old baby in tow.

The nimble gypsy with the long ebony black mane of thick curls gleaming against the moonlight had nimbly crawled and leapt and hopped and jumped from rooftop to rooftop like a seasoned acrobat.

Across the high top tight rope of a tautly pulled clothesline, Agnès had tied her precious papoose to her back and did a balancing act across. Much to her wide, amber-golden-eyed baby boy's exuberant squeals of delight, with his hands flying up to reach the vast sky's freedom as he reveled in his mother's daring courageous escape.

High above the 8th _arrondissement_ (district) of Paris boulevards the intrepid mother and child took flight. The dazzling city lights of Paris just coming alive as her backdrop, the foreground of the Arc de Triomphe as Agnès leapt and glided across the crowded buildings above along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the street said to be the world's most beautiful avenue, she flies upon the winds.

Shimmying down the side of the final ediface's gutters and runoff stone etchings like a dancing circus performer, the French gypsy named Agnès de Cavalier, in her moment of fear and desperate need, turned to the one place she could for safety. One she knew where she'd never be turned away, even in this cruel world.

Maddened that he had been given the slip by this simple peasant gypsy girl, Count Rügen had taken to horseback and made swift quick pursuit.

Knowing where the peasant girl would have gone, the clever devilish man had headed his steed's flared nostrils directly towards the fairytale destination where all vermin outcasts of the filthy city eventually ran to –

The Notre Dame Cathedral in the eastern end of Paris was the heart and origin of this consecrated quarter of this great city, several kilometers away from Agnès' _pied-à-terre apartment building._

Although, the Notre Dame de Paris, also known as " _Our lady of Paris"_ by the devoted patrons of the French Gothic Roman Catholic magnificent edifice, had been severely damaged and desecrated in the 1790's radical phase of the French Revolution, the Cathedral's status as the holy shrine of refuge was still undiminished.

Through the bustling town, even at this past sunset hour, Agnès dashed across the bridge that stretched across the River Seine. The gypsy girl had taken flight in her bare feet on wings of angels as she deftly navigated the tops of buildings, down water spouts, up and down over the boulevards as she weaved her way through the town she grew up in with the greatest of ease to get here.

Not all frightened by his young mother's death-defying leaps and jumps across building terraces and protruded gables as she raced like a stealthy cat along peaked roofs and through window supports, the baby boy that she had named Eugene - _which meant 'richness'_ – was wrapped in swaddling blankets tied like a knapsack to this former circus performer's back as her traveling companion.

When Agnès finally alighted on the _Ile de la Cite_ in the fourth _Arrondissemer_ before the French Gothic architecture of the medieval Catholic Cathedral, she was grateful that the massive doors in the darkened recesses of the North portal, had flung open for herself and her baby, as if by magic.

The slender, dark woman and her baby disappeared into the North portal's cracked stained glass windows beneath the imposing array of huge flying buttresses on the outside of the prominent structure.

Breathing hard, as the Notre Dame's doors were quickly slammed closed behind her, the gypsy woman stopped only to glance back out through the many cracked, stained glass window panes to see that that wicked evil spectre on his dark ebony horse was right on her heels.

"Please! Please…" Agnès, her mind raced with her wild eyes, her heart pounding in her deafened ears as the great bourdon Bell of the South Tower still rang loud and clear of the evening's close, looks around in pensive fear.

It was still several minutes before high mass would be delivered at the interior of the massive church complex where only a few worshipers already present. The Cathedral was practically empty, as they had been working for weeks on repairs to the church's south transept. Its immediate high altar's walls were beginning to collapse after all the damage it had suffered during the French Revolution's violence that ran madness in Paris' streets not so long ago.

Nonetheless, there were several devout nuns preparing the Cathedral apse upstairs, who she could hear preparing the orphaned children's choir for one last performance before they left this holy sanctuary that has been their home since the war ended. But with extensive repairs to the Notre Dame about to be underway, and the demand of the city ordinance for the street urchins of Paris to be more under control, the caring sisters had put together a plan with Parisian leaders, to distribute the children to other willing orphanages all over the continent.

And they were leaving tonight, for construction repairs were to begin in the morning.

Beneath the sweet religious songs flowing down from the choir apse of the orphaned children above practicing, one inconsolably weeping little girl with golden blonde hair was knelt at statue of the Virgin Mary and Child upon a pedestal to the left of where Agnès entered. A tightlipped man, all wearing widowers' black, was standing over the weeping child as they were lighting candles for their dead mother and wife at the prayer altar, far across the massive 4800 meter Cathedral's interior.

Seeing the innocent devotion of a child's head bent in prayer, Agnès felt compelled to fall to her knees as well at a side pew prayer kneeler where the statue of Mary was smiling down with benevolent kindness from above.

"Please, dear Mother Mary in Heaven, please keep my baby safe. Whatever happens to me, don't allow this devil to find him here. Please God, save my innocent baby boy from the penalty for my sins…" Bowing to her own knees and bringing Eugene close to her chest, Agnès prayed fervently over her beautiful brown haired golden amber-eyed babe, with a kiss to his gurgling, trying to speak, never crying lips. With a soft, petting caress across his square chin and a traced finger to his handsome, Roman nose and sure to be chiseled jaw features of her boy who was sure to be a gorgeous heartbreaker someday, Agnès hums along with the children's choir above to her lovely child a tender prayerful Christian lullaby.

 _"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray, dear Lord, my soul to take."_

As she prayed several 'Hail Marys' silently with pleading supplication on her own bended penitent knee, Agnès embraced her tiny baby boy one more time, but his little hands and fingers refused to let go of hers as he had instinctively laced within, quite possessively.

"You have beautiful fingers, my little Eugene. So strong and talented. You go find your dream using the fingers out in that big wide world. Don't let anyone ever tell you that you're not good enough, or that no one ever loved you. Because you have already stolen your mommy's heart first…" Overcome with emotion, Agnès buried her face in her giggling child's brown hair as the final bell named Emmanuel, the largest of all the Cathedral bells, rings in perfect _D#major_ crystal clear notes that rang through her torn soul.

She then laid the golden amber-eyed babe, minus his swaddling blanket, on the Notre Dame's reliquary table beside where the statue of our Lord at the Cross and the relics of the treasury. The reliquary was said to contain a fragment of the Cross and one of the Holy Nails that purportedly was once plunged into our Lord, even a piece of the Crown of Thorns that another outcast by the name of Jesus wore to selflessly take away the sins of a broken world.

Agnès knew that when the mass began shortly, her beloved treasure— the small baby boy who was wriggling and giggling in delight on the wide table as he reached his greedy hands for the shining golden candelabra chalices and holy treasures, would certainly be found.

With one last prayer up through the stained-glass circlet where the final rays of sunset were streaming orangey mixed with violet rays high above in the sky, the dark skinned woman left it to God beyond the heavens to take care of her small little outcast.

She nuzzled her boy to her prayerful lips.

Nearby on the bench of the massive wall of the pipe organ, Agnès paused for half a second to leave a quickly scribbled note addressed to her friend and organist, Sister Catherine, who had helped her deliver this special baby to the world. And surely the sweet nun would understand seeing him to safety now, too.

Then, Agnès la Cavalier, the gypsy dancer girl that the only thing she knew how to do.

She ran.

As fast as her long dancer's legs could carry her, the tanned beauty raced back out the North transept portal beneath the Tympanum of the Last Judgment vaulted opening that displayed the exquisite religious carvings of Christ and his apostles, surrounded by reverently supplicant Saints.

Back out on the streets, Agnès ran and ran and ran, pausing only long enough to ensure that the shadow stalker saw her and the bundle in her arms exit the cathedral and give chase.

And he did. Count Rügen, just about to enter the imposing French Gothic architectural building that was purported to be "Paris church of the kings of Europe" with absolutely no veneration for the Holy God that this hallowed shrine had been dedicated to for over 600 years, catches sight of the gypsy woman and remounted his dark horse.

It didn't take long for Rügen to figure out that the wretched woman was heading right back to her apartment, a few kilometers away. But this time, he would be waiting for her there.

* * *

"Now, that was a fruitless waste of both of our time, my dear, wasn't it? But what did I expect of a barefoot, uneducated ignorant gypsy creature such as you?" Rügen greeted Agnès, sitting upon her bed as she entered her own violated home to find the wicked young man toying with her vocational bag of craft string, beads, and crucifixes that the holy sisters had already blessed for her to make a meager living from.

"A girl must pray to her God to beg she may never encounter an inhuman, malformed, vile _monstre_ loosed in the streets of Paris." Brave Agnès, believing she had shaken him from her trail, still could taunt any man as she faced her cruel stalker down with plucky panache.

 _ **PAUSE**_.

Young Count Rügen was sitting there on the bed, methodically twirling the handcarved cross pendants he found on the desk irreverently between his deformed six fingers before speaking.

"Hand over the child, and you'll never have to dance with devils again, wretched gypsy filth. Here! A gift from the King." Rügen displays before Agnès' eyes, a small sack of silver pieces that he dropped the crucifix cross he had been playing with into the clinking metal bag.

The intelligent young woman's eyes glance from his hideous face to the glittery silver coins then back to Rügen's face.

"Let me get this straight. If I take this and give up my child to you, you'll leave me alone?" Biding her time, she began to strike up a conversation with the intolerable man.

"It is the King's desire." He said, perversely distorting the words of King Herbert to _'see that Agnès and her child never want for anything'_ into ' _see that gypsy and her child will never be wanted by anyone',_ by any means necessary it took to protect the King of Denmark from any future blackmailing demand.

Letting the silver coinage slip through his enumerated fingers, Rügen extends the bag of silver coin out towards her temptingly, but not without his ugly face being buried in her sweet smelling ebony gleaming hair.

"Perhaps next time you will learn to stay at your station rather than pray to your imaginary God for mercy." Rügen murmurs in Agnès' silky locks with a cackle as he nuzzles her tanned nape of neck, looking down at her heaving chest lasciviously.

It was all fear tactics. Count Rügen was as cold and calculating a monster as ever the world had seen, who refused to allow this lowly woman to have any foolish Danish monarchy claimed ties to the King's lineage. If she had no child, she would be nothing more than the dirt covered vagrant gypsy she was, who no one in their right mind would give hearing to ever again.

"My station in life? God holds a humble sinner, such as I, far above your _high-class_ wicked heart, you mutated manipulator of minds! Herbert would never want my child harmed! So, I am NEVER handing him over to you! Take your forty pieces of silver, Satan!" Slapping the bag of silver coins from his hand away so violently that the pieces of silver rain down from the open curtain terrace, Agnès was affronted that the despicable man had blasphemed God to degrade her place in the Lord's sight.

"I know what you have planned for us! Leave us alone, you deformed villain!" Wrenching herself free of his nauseating grasp, Agnès defiantly spit in Rügen's eye as she grabbed her bag full of her rosary assemblage that also contained every last coin she had in the world, rather than that bag full of silver that she tossed aside.

She clutched her swaddling wrapped 'baby' tighter to her and made a run for the apartment's front door.

"How dare you –!?" The seething irate royal cousin of the King, who was rather vitriolic in fuming on the particular subject of his extra sixth finger that he believed made him a superior man, grows enraged. He vindictively wiped the gypsy's spittle from his eyes and lunges across the room for her retreating figure with heated anger.

Grabbing viciously for the concealed baby in her arms, and tearing him away with such violence it would certainly have harmed the tender newborn infant with the malevolent pressure forcefully applied, Rügen is astounded when the baby's form collapsed into a bundle full of wax votive candles.

"What trickery is this?! Were you trying to deceive me, you filthy, insignificant piece of gutter trash?!" The apoplectic, bad tempered, antagonistic royal lackey indignantly lashed out his backhand to strike across Agnès' pretty face so hard that it almost immediately bruises her blackened battered eye and audibly cracking nose bone.

Next in their scuffle, he knocked her down and flung her to the bed with evil intent in his glare down at her.

But Agnès, unafraid, wiped at her split open mouth and gazed up at him with a defiant sneer on her swollen lip.

"Tell me now! Where is it that you have hidden that bastard child of yours?! When I find it, I will dispose of the wretch properly!" Rügen growled at her, looming over her sprawled out form as the belligerent villain pinned her bitterly down to the bed with the threat.

"I WILL NEVER- ergh!- EVER - Tell you, _Monstre_! When Herbert hears of this vicious cruelty – I don't care what hold you think you have over him now – but I know inside that he is a good man! Beneath that sliver of ice coating his heart is a noble gentleman! He won't allow you to harm his son! As long as there is a breath of life in me, I will find a way to contact him, so he can punish you!" Courageous, bluntly forthright Agnès la Cavalier would fight with everything she had in her protect her child.

"Get away from me, you revolting creature! My baby will live!" The French gypsy declared, struggling against the man's power just as the huge, thirteen ton, single largest Bell of the Notre Dame Cathedral dubbed 'Emmanuel' sounded, drowning out her woeful cries under duress.

But the streetwise, life-hardened nineteen-year-old Gypsy girl was not defenseless damsel in distress.

She was a warrior.

 _ **KICKKK!**_

With those long luscious legs that knew how to entice a man with her dance, as well as evict one with her kick, Agnès kneed Count Rügen where he was hovering over her pinned down form in his vitals so fiercely that the twenty-six-year-old young man was forced to shrivel away from the bed that the tough as nails gal athletically leapt up from.

Liberated as the wind as she glimpsed her freedom beyond the dusk's violet hues, Agnès was just about to make the climbing leap from her apartment's terrace when the re-energized with perfidious tension, heinous villain grasped her back.

With that long string of expensive genuine pink pearls that Herbert had purchased for her at Christmas that Agnès had been so proud to wear secretly beneath her shawls, Rügen slung the rope of pearl beads around her throat and garroted the choking woman as he pulled her back away from the terrace's freedom beyond.

As the pink and white pearlescent beads implode from their string as Agnès fights back, the vicious and cruel man, in his wrathful anger that knew no limitation, Count Rügen strangled his six fingered digits around a resisting Agnès' defiant neck. Incensed, he squeezed the life out of the vibrantly dazzling beauty who danced into King Herbert's life and tried to hijack his King's good name with her foolish womanly wiles…

His task halfway accomplished, the sound of footsteps in the hall quickly approaching at the noisy ruckus caused Rügen to flee through that window terrace in such a hurry that he slipped on several of those scattered pearls he had lassoed Agnès with.

And Rügen was launched out from the terrace balcony headfirst.

But the hand of Lucifer must've been on his side, as the wicked murderer managed to grasp onto the next ledge with his polydactyly six fingers and lower himself down to the ground level with only a sprained ankle and some painfully bruised ribs.

As the bells of Notre Dame rang loud and clear in the distance, the farewell evening mass for the orphaned children of Paris had concluded with the sweet strains of Schubert's classical piece. 'Ave Maria' was played on the pipe organ and sung by the children's choir in the background one more time before the generous beneficent sisters of the parish would scatter the waifs across the European continent.

They left with the hope to find new homes far beyond war-torn France, and a noisy baby boy's loud wail cry for his lost mother as he joined the departing procession punctuated the plaintive sounds that wafted pure innocence through this Paris still night's atmosphere …

 _"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum._ _  
 _Benedicta tu in mulieribus,_  
 _et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus._  
 _Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,_  
 _ora pro nobis peccatoribus,_  
 _nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."__

Agnès the Gypsy left this world with a prayerful thought and a defiant smile on her lips that was certain that her beloved baby, the only thing she ever really owned in this world - her gift from the only man she ever loved - would be taken far away by the protective arms of the dear sisters of the Lord, whom Agnès befriended and knew well. She was sure the holy nuns would move Heaven and earth to keep her baby safe. As they began their journey that night, already on their way with her precious baby Eugene mixed in with several other war orphans gathered onto the continent to distribute to poor children's orphanage in other countries were families would be eager to take them in, Agnès prayed that the Lord would go with them.

Her little Eugene would surely be secured in a good home… And perhaps someday. that letter she had written just this afternoon to Herbert's beloved Queen Louise of Denmark – the last missive Agnès would ever pen – would give her boy a family that Agnès herself, as an outcast, would never be welcomed to.

Agnès believed in the goodness of that benevolent older woman, whom her Herbert loved still so completely – as a good Christian who shared his love, the young gypsy girl knew Herbert's Louise would watch out for her little boy – her Eugene _Fitzherbert_ – in the coded surname adapted to his father's first, as was the custom of the day.

Agnès recognized that she herself was never meant to live to see him grow up to be a fine and handsome, charming young man, who would honestly win the heart of his own Princess fair one day himself.

And that far-off golden dream for her child was the scene last reflected in her exotic shining amber gold eyes…

The letter the sisters found within his wraps that had been stitched to the swaddling, crying babe when he first had been taken into the orphanage, with the name 'Eugene Fitzherbert' on the envelope clearly designated who this child was, had gradually been sent on to Egeskov.

And there, tenderhearted, Queen Louise received the missive of one desperate mother to another. But secretly trying to contact the French nuns, who had fallen to sickness themselves from disease spread throughout the children, many dying along their journey, Louise could not locate baby Eugene.

King Herbert was still ignorantly unaware of the many crimes that his twisted ankle servant, Count Rügen, did on his behalf. The slow-moving, injured villain, with the trail of the orphaned gypsy baby gone cold as the holy sisters' graves, returned to Denmark with a fabricated story of a virulent plague that had claimed both gypsy mother and her child that was running rampant throughout the continent.

The saddened King, that intoxicating segment of his unsettled, discontent restlessness done and finished, then returned to his proper dutiful life in the Southern Isles and his beloved royal wife Louise's side, appreciating her forgiving love more now than ever before.

He even stopped asking her to bear him sons, her love enough to fill him.

But Queen Louise, some eight long years later, felt strong enough to take it on herself to try one more time for her beloved King. Even though the gentle, yet brave-hearted redhead had the intuition she would never see her last baby born, she wanted to give, once more, God's precious gift of life to this child through the love of her husband.

And all of King Herbert's dreams, hopes and, after all, immense love he had for his faithful, understanding soulmate, left him to grieve in this world as she went on to the next.

Feeling totally abandoned by love when his Louise died, that cold sliver of the ice mirror of reflected ambition that he had driven dormant had expanded to grow his heart cold and harsh again, tenfold times, in his anger at the world. His resentment was especially directed at this last despised child who had brought about the death of the only last vestige of warmth he had left.

But the last hope on Queen Louise's unselfish lips had been put to pen and paper for her numerous young sons to seek out that poor gypsy girl's lost son, so her beloved King Herbert could someday meet and recognize him.

And maybe then, her darling Herbert could find God's warmth to forgive his own cold heart for the forgotten outcast child who never knew his own mother's love…

…Just as her smallest outcast baby boy would not know hers either…

 _"Gud vær' barmhjertige til udstødte_..."('God be merciful to the outcasts…') were her final words on this earth, but were not of it.

Utterly good, noble, _brave_ Queen Louise had just been able to scrawl that prayer across the bottom of the page of her last testament request to her children...With an enduring hope beseeching one of them to someday fulfill their selfless mother's final wishes—and set their regretful father free…

* * *

 _ **Back to Present day…**_

 _Shake! Shake! shake!_

Violently shaking his head that reverberated with a sudden splitting migraine, Count Rügen backs away from Eugene and where Hans was clinging to the cage cell in sheer fright for his friend and brother. Without a word, Rügen wordlessly growls at the enigmatic unpropitious fate that the stars had dealt against him. The plotting dark henchman furtively retreats to ponder his next move, though his insides were for the first time in his life, shaken.

His nemesis of that devil boy Hans had brought this unexpected anomaly of the gypsy child he believed long dead, back into his scheming, wicked life.

 _You truly must be born of Lucifer, to bring this tormented curse upon me again!_

"Flog the prisoners to make sure they are incapacitated for any further intrepid escapes during our short transfer to the trial. And ready the ship for immediate departure." A growling Master Rügen calls over his recoiling shoulder as the snakelike devil glares back one more time at both these contemptible, loathsome young prisoners who were supposed to be outcasts in the darkness of this world's shadows, not seen in the light as heroes of fairytales…

* * *

"What the hell happened to him? It's like he thought he saw a ghost or something when he looked at me! Not that I'm complaining. But…Tell me—is my face that frightening?" Flynn Rider says with a sardonic toothy smirk, completely unaware that that was the very man who snuffed out the life of his own mother, whom he never knew.

It was almost solely due to this vindictive cretin that Eugene Fitzherbert did not have the opportunity to grow up in a family – even in a single parent household – with the hard-working mom who loved him dearly for the few short months she had to care for him.

But Love cannot be measured by the hours in the day...

In the few minutes after he gave instructions, the three lackeys of Count Rügen had already swiftly begun at their task. They roughly strip Eugene and Hans, after they wrestled him too from the cage, of their shirts and jackets.

"Whoaa! What's going on here?! It's too chilly in this bilge to go nude, guys! Although, I must admit, I do have quite a stunning physique to display, if I do say so myself." Flynn says, quite full of himself for his stunning appearance of ample chest musculature from his amazing pecs down to his spectacular obliques.

"AHHHH!" Flynn Rider is dragged by his armpits like a slab of beef across the bilge deck by one of the large bodied minions of that evil ex-six fingered bad dude from Hans' past.

And his as well, by fate's grand design.

Once they get Eugene and Hans' arms tied and hanging up to a high meathook against the opposite wall beside one another, the trio of men then straps their two sets of legs to the shackles attached to the wall of the torture chamber.

The three burly, large muscled lackeys work together to then even yank down the incapacitated prisoners' pants.

"HE~EYY! Don't get too friendly, I'm warning you! Only my wife has the privilege to pull down my trousers! None of that! Get your dirty mitts away from my kid brother!" Horrified at seeing those guys strip the slim redheaded young man butt naked as well beside him, Eugene struggles with his mouth going a mile a minute in a futile attempt to preserve some sort of dignity.

"W-Wait! What are you going to do with that whippy looking thing!? OUCHY! DAMN! Take it easy on my not so girded up loins, pal! Damn, that hurts!" Eugene, never lost his tongue even when losing his pride, swears stridently as he is flogged in his rear caboose like a naughty child.

But the crack of the whip comes as the only response while the trio of villains tag team take turns as they begin to flog with the 'cat o' nine tails' navy whip Hans' and Eugene's shocked rear backsides.

 _ **SWATTCCHH!**_

 _ **SWITTTCH!**_

"Ergh!" Hans, his own trim, well-toned muscles on display, the bandages of the recent stab wound at his ribs falling away, gasps after getting his share of the harsh lashing of the naval whip for punishment. Also known to sailors as the ' _Captain's daughter'_ , the whipping tool was basically a handle connected to nine thin pieces of string line, each knotted several times along the length to inflict pain during the flogging procedure.

The attractive, broad-shouldered young man grits his teeth against the whipping punishment that Master Rügen had doled out for the pair of captured brothers, bearing the stinging pain as silently as he could, like a man.

"Argh! WHAT THE HELL?!" Unlike Eugene, who was practically caterwauling at every whip slash to his tight backside.

"Storbror! This is the normal summary punishment onboard oceangoing vessels, however humiliating the optimal deterrence may be." Hans explains to Eugene the naval right of passage all Royal Navy boys and midshipman trainees were subjugated to as induction into the fleet. The infantile bare bottom thrashing served as both embarrassment and corporeal penalty for slacking in ship duties during the right of passage for the Navy's macho spirit of 'taking it like a man' in a week's daily chastisement to 'brave the pain'.

"Boy! Am I glad I never joined the Navy! Your home is full of a sadistic bunch of jackasses, Sideburns! Hey, ouch!" Eugene calls out over his shoulder at the injustice of a sailor's life.

"How many times must you express – _ergh_ – that inscrutable inaccuracy, Storbror?" Bristling with each with new blood-oozing red line formed on his already excoriated back, Hans closes one eye as he glances over to where a disheveled Eugene was side-by-side with him hanging from the curved hook of the subject doing's torture area in the ship's lower bilge hold.

Eugene glances dolefully abashed back to peek at his similarly punished little brother who was dually harnessed up to the hook their hands were bound to above each of their handsome heads as they each took twenty lashes like a man, though at disparate volume levels.

"Care to enlighten me, again on that point, Sideburns? A _rgh_! That's gonna be one big hell of a sore tomorrow! Ouch!" Eugene keeps up the quipped banter, despite the physical pain to his throbbing posterior. It was his way of keeping sane amid the insanity of his life.

"Indeed, Storbror. _Ergh_! Egeskov is not – and never has been – _ergh_ \- _**my**_ home!" Hans admits with a tinge of sadness and regret that comprised his lonely childhood.

"Well, it is sure as hell's not mine! _Argh_! This treatment might be good for the old backbone, right?! Oww! Don't scar my spectacular scaps!" He complains verbosely. "Speaking of home…" Eugene smiles at the pleasant thought of Corona palace's easy-going life.

"Oof. What say you, boys? _Argh_! If you let us get off the ship – all in one piece – _Owie_!– I personally promise you a fat, juicy reward and cushy lifetime pensionable jobs in Corona's justice department. _Hey_! Watch that thing! What about it? Don't you get sick of traveling around, just following the orders of that pinch-face old Rügen, who bosses you around like mindless little trained minions?! Huh?! You big, strapping lads look like you could use some respect – not to mention some well-deserved R &R. And health benefits to go along with it! I can assure you, we have in Corona, some excellent primary care facilities right in – _ouch_!" Feeling a bit giddy in his mortification of being liberated from his pants half hanging down and certain not-so-modest parts exposed, Eugene is so caught up in his own, highly plausible enticing bribe to buy himself and the two other fellas out as well out of this world of hurt, that he hadn't noticed how the trio of the thugs had ceased taking turns whipping him and his redheaded stripped bareback compatriot.

"And boy, we've got some fine looking women back in Corona!" Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them, believing himself capable of the talking his way out of any situation, Flynn appreciated it more when his audience paid a little attention to him. The three cohorts appeared to be in a discussion of some deep caliber.

Finished in their discussion, two of them returned to huddle down before each of a naked Hans and Eugene's feet.

"I wonder what they're doing down there? Any idea what they're up to, Lillebror? You're the experienced naval officer." Eugene candidly asks his younger sibling who was, by far, more knowledgeable of naval punitive judgment from the sound of it.

"You don't want to know." Hans speaks with sighed solemn resignment at this acrimonious stage of flogging flagellation and that makes Eugene's hair stand on end. The men at their feet begin to wrench off both pairs of the brothers' stylish boots.

"Hee hee hee! Careful, boys! My feet are EXTREMELY TICKLISH – ARGH! Hey! You're as bad as Maximus! Give me back my boots! DAMN!" Eugene screams out in sudden livid anger at this new punishment as the third man brandishes a cane, along with a cackle.

"You're going to need that healthcare yourself soon, motormouth."

The two men with the upbraided skin on their red and slightly bloody, horizontally streaked barebacks and thrashed tight tushes were now hanging there in their bare feet. Struggling as they might against their chained bonds, neither were in any position to stave off the sadistic trio of men. The cruel guardsmen bend up their paired feet to squarely aim at the sole arches of Eugene and Hans concurrently in the torture of bastinado – _foot caning_ – with strokes concentrated at the vaults of the feet to make walking painful and running away virtually impossible.

"Now we won't have to worry about your escaping so much, will we, when we make landfall momentarily, you pair of scrawny, undernourished escape artists?! And don't expect us to carry you losers! The old man will be bad enough to drag along." Chortling wickedly, the third crony joins the other two guardsmen in his antipathetic mocking of the pair of degraded, half stripped naked and fully flogged young men that they unhook simultaneously and uncaringly drop to the ground.

Hans and Eugene land in a single pile of painfully beat-up and bruised exposed bodies that the thugs, in one final callous disservice to their prisoners, pour simultaneous buckets of chilly sea-water over the downed men's pussy, blood-gashed backsides.

"Guess not." His feet pounding, back aching, his butt stinging, soaked to the bone Eugene Fitzherbert never felt so much pain before all at once. But his now lucid little brother seemed to be taking it in stride.

"You know that old saying about hitting yourself with a hammer to make another pain be diminished? I don't believe there's a body part of me left not aggrieved. So, I suppose that old adage does not apply here. How about you, Storbror?" Bedraggled, red hair dripping dingy water across his pretty-boy simpered face, Hans tries to make light of their awful circumstance, his recently operated on stab wound especially sensitive, but thankfully remaining sutured close, at his freshly lacerated lower back.

"I don't want to talk about it." Eugene murmurs in a crabby mood from the planked bilge floor. His back hurt like hell, his buttocks stung whichever way he tried to position them, and his bullet-ridden arm from being strung up so long was beyond sore. And Eugene was certain, from the look of Hans' red-streaked thrashed back and behind, that he was sharing his same pains.

But the older brother watches in sheer awe how Hans could find the drive to compel himself enough to initiate pulling his clothes back on that had been tossed atop them by the cackling guards who, convinced of their prisoners' helplessness, had abandoned them to their own devices.

" _'Yet what we are suffering now, is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later_." Romans 8:18." Hans turns to his Biblical truth of faith to sustain his weary body and soul. Although, meeting Eugene's eyes in their humiliating state of undress, Hans still had thoroughly embarrassed red cheeks to match his red hair.

"You keep on singing ' _Glory, Glory, Hallelujah'_ , Lillebror, to that sparkling white Angel on your shoulder, Kid. I'll take care of the ' _Fire and Brimstone, Hell to Pay'_ end of this raw deal to the Devil whose pitchfork is already on mine." Flynn hisses out in resentment he watches Hans superhumanly rise from the ground to pull up pants and then wriggle back into his discarded tall black boots, holding back a pained face when the battered soles of his feet hit the floor as he stands.

Eugene did not appreciate being treated like an unwanted outcast one hundred percent of the time, nor the physical abuse by these men unworthy to wipe the bottom of his little brother's boots. Eugene lets out a long sigh, thinking what his Rapunzel would say about this all.

"But at least we were humiliated butt-naked, beaten up to a pulp, and water-tortured together this time, eh? No one having to rescue the other, 'cause we're both in the same damn boat. It's like we're in some thrilling, sadistic contest to outdo one another with how much pain we can withstand, and show off our manly physiques at the same time."

"Now that's the spirit, Storbror." Hans answers the almost upbeat statement in kind as he methodically tugs on his navy blur Sjoforsvaret Kommander jacket with his previously undead blood-drained arms that the flogging appeared to stimulate the blood vessels and reinvigorate.

But he carefully and slowly accustoms his newly punished, bloodied back to the fabric thereof, as Eugene sits up to observe.

"Speaking of manliness… Glad to see that you've got some hair on your chest – red, of course. Maybe not as manly as your hirsute big bro here. But you'll do for a certain crystal eyed Queenie, from every tight angle that I've seen. And I've seen them all now." Half taunting, half teasing, Eugene manages to bring a smile and a blush to Hans' straight, firm jaw line and cheeks.

"Storbror! Such a thing! A lady's delicate sensibilities in this area are never referred to in such a debased manner!" The gentleman in Hans berates the cad in Eugene emphatically.

"Don't be fooled by those fluttering eyelids, Lillebror. Those lovely ladies are thinking about _this area_ , every time they look at you. Believe me. They just hide it behind those blushing smiles while they're assessing the goods up and down."

"Ahem." Beet red in the face more now than earlier, Hans quickly recovers his own affronted sensibilities, as he too was able to ignore the sore pain in his thrashed back as he stretches.

Ignoring the throb of his feet, Hans picks up on his older brother's comic joviality that indeed psychologically took a great deal of the sting of the flogged lashing pain away.

"At least now we have ascertained, Storbror, once and for all - out in the open, so to speak - that we have both have been well endowed by our Creator in other _certain_ areas, as well. As is the tendency of genetic makeup for blood relations, I have heard." Hans had a simper etched on his handsome features that accompanied the low class insinuation inferred in Flynn Rider's more plebian language style.

"But mine's bigger than yours." Eugene can't help but get in the last word, accompanied with quite a proud smirk of his own. Hans was astute enough not to contradict him on this touchy matter, with more than a gainsay raised eyebrow on his bemused features.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Hee hee hee hee!"

Laughing in the face of danger rather than wallowing in a pity-party, Hans Westergaard and Eugene Fitzherbert share in the common joviality of prideful male humor. Despite the torture, humiliation and harsh pain they both had just endured, their masculine attitudes to defy setback proudly spoke of the indomitable spirit of man.

Two decks above, Count Rügen could swear that he heard strange, merry laughter ringing up through the grates of the ship, that did not go normally with a pain-inflicted flogging punishment.

But Rügen already considered both of these unwanted throwaway children of his royal master gone wrong, highly abnormal.

Besides, the depraved, iniquitous man would never understand how the best of brothers could laugh together at anything, as Eugene and Hans were finding out.

Even If they didn't know what crazy situation was coming at them next, they both knew they would be able to handle it, as side-by-side outcasts living on a prayer for Almighty God's help…

* * *

 _God help the outcasts_ _  
 _Hungry from birth_  
 _Show them the mercy_  
 _They don't find on Earth_  
 _God help my people_  
 _They look to You, still_  
 _God help the outcasts_  
 _Or nobody will ..._  
_ I ask for nothing  
I can get by  
But I know so many  
Less lucky than I  
Please help my people (Choir: Amen)  
The poor and downtrod  
I thought we all were  
The children of God  
God help the outcasts  
Children of God  
Children of God

 _ **Ave Maria Latin Text:**_

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.  
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,  
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.  
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,  
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,  
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

 _Ave-Maria English text:_

'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  
Blessed art thou among women,  
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus  
Holy Mary, Mother of God,  
Pray for us sinners  
Now and at the hour of death. Amen.'

* * *

" _Gud vær barmhjertige til udstødte –_ "God, be merciful to the outcasts" in Danish

 _pied-à-terre -French temporary apartment building_

 _Cavalier_ \- Rider in French

* * *

 ** _'I don't do backstory…'_**

You do now, Eugene!

How did you like my backstory of Eugene Fitzherbert's origins? If you hadn't guessed, his French gypsy Mom was modeled after Esmeralda from 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (using the original birth name of Victor Hugo's heroine, Agnès, the French Roma girl gypsy dancer)

My Agnès, of course is the great-great-great descendant of France's 15th century Esmeralda & her stubbly soldier, Captain Phoebus. (And they had the more propitious end with Quasimodo than in the original book too! Like in the Brothers Grimm original 'Rapunzel', where Flynn was more of a cad prince sneaking in towers to seduce Rapunzel and ends up going blind in the process, after Gothel pushes him out the window. I prefer our lovably talkative roguish thief hiding from the law, wanting ' _nothing to do with your hair, except get out of it!)_ '

That's the magic of Disney storytelling! They give us the happy endings we all need and love!

And as told before, Hans' mother Queen Louise is loosely based on Merida's looks and Highlander family ties from way back in the Scotland 14th century!

I like to keep new characters easy to be seen and related to. And these ancestors of Hans and Eugene fit right in with their Brave spirited persona of winsome red hair and Notre Dame wild gypsy tanned gorgeous looks.

I hope you enjoyed this mainly flashback chapter, with the theme of that beautiful, haunting melody 'God Help the Outcasts' playing throughout.

I can just envision that tiny infant in swaddling clothes reaching for those shiny chalices and sparkly bejeweled relics. Cute little Baby Eugene's backstory turned into quite a tragedy, didn't it? Poor Agnes. Her only crime was to fall into an ill-fated love…

Then, in contrast, to lighten the heartbreaking mood, we got to see a lot of present day Hans and Eugene and their continuing rollicking adventures.

 **AND I MEAN ALOT! WOWWEE BOYS!** You two brothers sure showed a hunk of flesh in skin exposure today **!** But that was the practice of the day for naval flogging. So, you out there got a fan service eyeful of gorgeous Hans and stunning Eugene in their birthday suits, if your imagination is fertile enough! _

Mine sure is! I'm still swooning… #0#...How about you? ^_^ Our poor beleaguered heroes and their red striped, lacerated backsides…But I admired how their spirits, bantering with one another, couldn't be dampened. (even by a bucket of cold seawater! Chilly bums! ^0*) These two gorgeous men could still joke, laugh together, even be competitive of their – _ehem_ \- treasures, in moments of painful torture.

I do beat up on this pair handsome guys, particularly, don't I? I feel guilty. ^0* ( _Not_! if we get to elucidate more on their tight angles! :)

Rapunzel & Elsa will have some gentle comforting to do for their injured fellows soon…

And, FYI, that little girl Agnes overheard talking to her Father in the Notre Dame crying for her lost mother was Marguerite, the sad wife of Westergaard son #4 Ivers. Let's see if she remembers seeing abandoned baby Eugene in the cathedral that fateful day...

All kinds of pathos, intrigue and eye-catching excitement going on in this chapter!

Please leave reviews! I'd love to hear what you thought of this thrilling chapter full of past revelations!

God bless you, Frozen friends!

And may God bless all the outcasts out there, too!

HarukaKou


	13. Chapter 13 - I Was Born Ready

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 13**

 **"I Was Born Ready"**

"What's taking her so long?! Where's cousin Rapunzel!? She said she'd be back by sunset! Ooh! I don't like waiting!" Those four words said it all for one impatient, foot-tapping, arm-crossed and sour-puss faced young woman.

Princess Anna of Arendelle had seen more than enough of waiting in her young life to fill an entire book of boredom. And today her patience was at its infinitesimal limit for sitting in cafés, lying low in barns, or staring dully at the blue sky above while lying in the grass of this small little Kvaerndrup village of the Southern Isles.

 _You said that – or something thereabouts - about eight times already since mid-afternoon, Anna. And it's not even sunset yet! Give it a break!_

Kristoff Bjorgman thinks to himself with a rolled eye smirk at his impatient little woman. He had personally watched Anna stalk up and down the windy, tree-lined path that led from the small Danish village towards the palatial estate up ahead, and returned like a caged animal so many times since their luncheon at the Café this afternoon earlier, her partner was dizzy.

"Only seven times. And I heard that, Mister Bjorgman." With a puckered lipped annoyance of his mental ridicule workings, tapping her noggin, Anna abruptly stops at the edge of the curving road. She then ducks behind a thicket of bramble bushes for what Kristoff decided must be a call of nature from the way she must be knelt down to the grassy ground all of a sudden.

Anna's strapping lad had forgotten how close they were soulfully attuned to one another's brainwaves. Guiltily, Kristoff had also forgotten to curtail his thought's criticisms so that she would not hear.

But Anna would always know his heart, because she could read him like an open book.

"All right, all right! You win! Ha ha ha! But don't you think we've come far enough for you to get the ' _feel of the ambiance of the Castle Egeskov'_ by now? Whatever the heck that means. Seriously, Anna, it might not be a good idea if we're spotted near the grounds." As the couple traipses through the outer ward's postern gate, Kristoff bemoans, as his neck hackles warn him to move out. He squints his eyes around the vibrant green frontage of the Danish castle on the moat some fifty meters to the left where Anna persisted on waltzing onto the Royal estate, uninvited.

"You have to just wait for Rapunzel to come out with Sister Angelika to tell us what's going on inside for just a little longer…Right?" The Wind Whisperer was offering his best attempt to placate his anxious gal when he abruptly notices that her presence, which, as sensitive, caring, new husband, Kristoff, was giving Anna some private space behind the cover of the bushes – had vanished.

"Anna? Aw, man. Are you crazy?" The blond Mountaineer gripes aloud, astounded at one little girl's feistyness to get her into such a heap of trouble. He watches, in disbelieving amazement, Anna's lithe body race like a chased field mouse from point-to-point and tree to tree. Her braids were helicopter-ed up tight over her head, with a kerchief of some type, her aqua sunflower print skirt tucked up to her waist and tied to leave only her bloomers and green petticoat widely displayed. The Arendelle Princess scurries more like a trained commando along the lush grounds of Egeskov Castle, rather than the demure, petite Royal Princess she was supposed to portray.

 _I love crazy…_

Kristoff can't help but sincerely smile proudly—despite his frustration of unknown danger and worry as he surveys his lively girl. Anna weaves in a serpentine fashion around the verdant green lawns and sculpted hedgerows of fuchsia flower bushes with a dirt streaked blackface makeup across her adorable serious countenance. Warming up, the caramel cutie runs in leaps and hops like a young gazelle in her humorous attempts to be clandestine and unnoticed by the growing crowd of tall, dark and handsome men ushering some rather fat, short or thin diplomats in shapes of every size around the Castle's front courtyard gate footbridge. The younger men seemed to be giving their visitors a grand tour of the Egeskov estate as they were just coming back to the castle now.

"Hold on. I'm coming, Feistypants." The young Snow Prince lets out a low chuckle at her impulsive, spontaneous insanity. Luckily, Kristoff's protective nature was strident, and he was good-natured when it came to most of Anna's bouts of spur-of-the-moment lunacy. Although, this time, his innate internal intuitive senses were assuring him that there was not a serious detrimental actual danger factor within those ominous medieval castle walls that would have the new husband stop his gung-ho little wife in her hasty tracks.

At least, there wasn't such a threat _inside_ there, **_yet_** …

Like a Valkyrie warrior woman with a sworn dangerous mission, Anna skulks and slinks from bountiful bush to delicately sculpted hedge with the scarf tied around her hair so tightly in a kerchief that it made her look quite exotic eyed. Anna makes her way stealthily into the Castle foreground along the sidestream on the eastern outer ward of this kingdom's plentiful landscape.

Even from a distance, her keen eyes observed the gaggle of distinctly related tall, dark and handsome princes of this land whom she had assumed were Hans' nasty brothers from their fancy pants clothes and haughty airs of walking. Some were even donning the all too familiar pale gray and navy blue Søværnet Naval uniform inscribed in her memory of the first man she'd ever fallen in love with.

 _Not real true love like I have with my Kristly! Just some kind of zany infatuation with the first boy I practically ever saw! So it barely counts…_

 _Hey, I must've been REALLY desperate way back then!_

"Even that Hans was slicker in his uniform, Brother Ponytail." Anna insolently murmurs beneath her breath to see one particularly beady-eyed sailor boy wearing almost the exact uniform (minus Hans' purplish tie) she had met dashing, sweep-a-girl-off-her-feet, dancing and romancing young Mr. Westergaard in all those years ago.

The last of the royal brothers and diplomatic guests were about to enter the Egeskov's front entry – some of whom Anna had previously met in Arendelle at Elsa's coronation. But while she was not paying much attention to her immediate surroundings, the keen eyed, cynical girl is startled that she was going to be spotted by one big burly, middle-aged Prince with a dark furry walrus mustache and beard as he paused to light his pipe and take a smoke before entering the Castle.

The big man walks about smoking his pipe, biding his off-time as he moves in Anna's line of eyesight direction.

Before she knew it, to avoid his penetrating stare, the panicked Princess had ducked herself behind an unbelievably tall hedge. Disoriented by its dizzying height when she made the mistake to look up the thick bamboo greenery, there Anna had gotten herself hopelessly lost within its confusing convolutions in no time.

"Ahh! This dumb stupid kingdom even has trap bushes! What else would I expect from clever trickster Hans' family abode!? Which way did I get sucked into the silly plant menagerie?" Stamping her foot to the ground, Anna may have been a tad too proud to admit that she had gotten herself stuck as she spoke aloud to her telepathic man.

But Kristoff understood the ginger Princess better than she knew herself, and thought nothing of her maladroit blunder.

Even though the five foot four inch orangey haired girl was too vertically challenged see above the aspiring hedge bushes' peaks, six foot five inch, rugged mountaineer Kristoff Bjorgman was not so handicapped.

On tiptoe the skyscraper tall man rarely had to employ, Kristoff peers over the well pruned, fine specimen of flat trimmed horticulture in this kingdom's prestigious bamboo maze that was approximately grown to a towering seven foot height to stretch over even his almost six and a half foot big and tall size.

 _{"Do you hear me, talking to you? Across the waters, across the deep blue oceans, under the open sky. Oh, my, Baby, I'm trying."}_

Finding the situation totally amusing to counter it with a tender song, the musically inclined young Saami raised man was making up his _yoike_ as he went. Kristoff, with an inward chuckle, pulled his lute guitar into play that he had affixed to his back earlier to wile away the time and lull the calm for his sure-to-be impatient girl at the same time.

He starts to strum its strings and serenade an uptight Anna with gentle lyrics full of flirtatious, saccharine meaning for his true love. After all, as a wandering minstrel's son, crooning and music came easy for Kristoff.

Good thing, too, because nothing calmed down the vivacious songful Princess' spirit more than a lovely mellow tune to inverse her sour mood right around.

 _{"Boy, I hear you, in my dreams. See you whisper, across the sea. I keep you with me in my heart. You make it easier when life gets hard."}_

In her sweet lilting soprano, Anna responds to her blond serenader with a giddy shining smile to her adored one on her cute features. Kristoff's soft tone had washed away her bitter resentment directed at the despised Southern Isles, and all within it.

Glad he brought his lover out of her doldrums as he sensed her mood swing upward, Kristoff utilizes his tensile muscle mass to propel himself over the tall hedge without even getting a running start, or breaking a sweat. His deep soul senses direct him down the green corridors of the confusing maze until he located his erstwhile missing bride.

{"Lucky I'm in love with my best friend. Lucky to have been where I have been. Lucky to be coming home again…"} Picking up at one another's voices full of the pure love that was written upon every sense they had come to know so completely as eternal friends, with the promise to be lifelong lovers.

Anna sighs as she pauses to take in the scene of her gorgeous man leap through the air like a superhero and race around the final corner of the perplexing Danish maze to zero in right to her. Mesmerized, she watches him strum his instrument as the final rays of the sun catch fire in her handsome, romantic guy's golden blond mane of hair.

And Anna of Arendelle felt so completely blessed to have such a man – her prince among princes. She realizes, all at once, how fair and lenient a heart and how trusting the soul of their bond he must have to allow her – help her, in fact – try to locate the last person on earth he should wish for her to so fervently seek out – her ex-fiancé, Hans Westergaard.

Anna knew her Kristly loved her too much ever to let the petty jealousies of this world affect their close relationship's belief in one another. Kristoff was too utterly good to allow that to happen.

 _{"Thank you for putting up with my nuttiness, Kristly, in this crazy search for Hans. You always support me with your love. You know, you are so beautiful, inside and out…I'm so lucky to have you…"}_

Anna's mind projects pure love to her soul mate in the tender sentiments she hadn't taken the time to consider much until now. Their blazing eyes only for one another, full of sheer adoration across the sunset distance, yearn to express that special love again in their youthful drive to touch and feel one another close…

" _Lucky we're in love in every way. Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed. Lucky to be coming home again…"_ As Anna and Kristoff rush down the long expanse of the hedge maze to meet in the home of one another's welcoming arms, they sing in synchronized soul unison in their linked minds this melody of their undeniable true love of perfect harmony.

But not long after Kristoff and Anna reach the endless sea of one other's warm embrace, with a wildly passionate kiss allowed to run free to full fervor in this secluded maze's setting, a harsh voice interrupts their melodious duet.

"What are you two doing here in this maze?! I didn't see you come in with any of our other guests. You don't look as if you belong to any of them as servants, either, do you? This is private property!" A dark-haired, well-endowed of body, thirtysomething-year-old man demands as his eyes look skeptically first at Kristoff and then doubtfully at the face-painted Anna.

The man's deep bellow is backed up by a double barreled rifle aimed directly at the shocked couple. Cocking his long rifle, the Danish royal shows off his gun wielding prowess which he had been displaying to the visiting dignitaries all afternoon with his brothers on the shooting range.

"Who are you?! What?! Cat got your tongue, boy?! Who do you work for!? And why are you here?!" Squinting his eyes, dubious Prince Franz stares at the lute now again slung over Kristoff's shoulder, as he pokes at the blond man's chest with his loaded weapon, itching to pull its trigger at these trespassers.

"I am Prince Franz, and this is my father's estate! We don't welcome traveling minstrels or vagrants to this kingdom. So I'll ask you to leave, quietly. I'm in a generous mood since it's the King's birthday tomorrow, and he's the magistrate. Or else, you'd have to suffer the heavy consequences for trespassing on the royal property of Denmark, if I have to drag you before the courts." Franz threatens, Kristoff's amply displayed well-endowed muscles in a short sleeve tunic, making the man keep his gun trained on the blond mountaineer's powerful form.

"No, you're right – we're not with any of the visitors… Sir…Could you please point that thing in the other direction? You're making me nervous." Grimacing as he puts his own hands up subjectively at gunpoint of the violent weapon, Kristoff was not a fearful chicken man by any means. But he decidedly did _not_ trust the trigger-happy, similarly muscle bound Prince as far as he could throw him. Which didn't look all that far at all, considering the large prince's solid looking density.

And after all he'd heard of the conquering Danes over the years, coupled with Hans' stories concerning his older, unkind, cruel brothers, Kristoff was not comfortable at being at the business end of any of their rifles.

"Not a chance, you Norske intruder! I'm keeping these sights set on you!" Franz cries out at Kristoff, befuddled to anger, with his ill-tempered ire rising to a violent pitch.

 ** _BANG!_**

A stray bullet cuts through the still, tense air that causes Anna to squeak in fear that Kristoff had been shot right before her eyes. Even Kristoff has to look down and check himself for bullet entry, the shot fired by the high-powered rifle pretty close by and intense, by their ringing ears.

"What is it, Franz? Did you corner some poor beast that you can't handle yourself in that maze?" Calling out from a short distance, Prince Berte was cool and calculated with his words to this younger brother as he was with his own wife, Princess Hermine.

After attempting a shot that unintentionally missed a brave mink that had popped up on the lawns of this estate near the creature's natural habitat of the river shore, Prince Berte, a natural hunter, made his way through the maze in no time. But even he was surprised see what Franz had cornered inside.

"Poor beasts, indeed, Franz. Who are they?" Intrigued, despite his bad mood, by the interesting pair of this large framed tall, tall blond foreign man and the wild looking girl with darting eyes peering up at them from beneath a head kerchief, both faces smudged with the dirt from Anna's cheeks in their kissing scuffle.

"I found the pair of them in here cavorting. This dirt-covered peasant boy, seducing the girl with his provocative song, was obviously attempting to take advantage and force his attentions on this vulnerable little maiden! The indignity of it all, right on the King's property! So I had to step in and rescue her, didn't I?" Prince Franz tries to justify his overt aggression with the hand of chivalry.

Berte assesses the ravished state of the attacked little lady's undress with her blue-green skirt hiked up to her immodest petticoat and pantalettes display before the prince's dulled gaze with a detached clinical eye.

"What?! **Who** are you calling a ' _vulnerable little maid'_?!" Never one to hold her tongue, Anna purses her insulted lips, appalled more at being deemed 'little' and 'vulnerable' than hearing Kristoff accused of the serious crime of committing amorous congress in this Victorian age.

"A punishable crime indeed." Strict and demanding high moral standards, Prince Berte ignores Anna entirely, his critical gaze on Kristoff and this accusation of intent to keep convivial society with this wide-eyed innocent young woman. Upon hearing the noise of the female shriek, the thirty-six-year-old had joined his younger brother in this tense confrontation with this big blond, foreign man who was obviously low-class Nordic from his dirt-smudged facial features.

Kristoff gulps his large Adam's apple down under this prosecuting Prince's scrutiny of their clicket as silent seconds tick by.

After that kerfuffle in the sitting room with that strange Prussian Princess, and the episode his pregnant little wife Hermine had caused with her, Prince Berte had come outside to seek some fresh air, still holding onto his trusty loaded favorite companion—his rifle—at his side to relieve some of the steam and irritation he had pent-up by shooting down an innocent bird or scurrying rodent or two before supper was ready.

Franz had joined his older brother soon thereafter. The rigorous sportsmen never missed a chance to partake in any bloodsport. Not ever to be described as a 'people person', diplomatic crowd mingling was never the soft-spoken big man's style anyway. He never did care for visitors much, preferring to stay outdoors, making him quite familiar with this perplexing bamboo maze.

Berte and Franz, over the years of growing up seeking adventure, had gone hunting on many game hunting expeditions to Africa and the Far East together in search of wilder game than available in the mundane Southern Isles. Their success together was proved by many of the stuffed heads and pelts and antlers and tusks of the gunned-down animals adorning the Castle walls that these two boys had done a great deal of the bagging and hunting thereof in their misspent youth.

Cunning Berte, who, in contrast to tall, dumb lummox Franz, was one of the shortest and most scheming of all the Westergaard brothers. He looks up at Kristoff suspiciously as the big blond foreigner clears his throat to speak.

"Look. This is all a misunderstanding. This _vulnerable little maiden_ , as you call her, is my **wife** , Anna. And I'm Kristoff Bjorgman. We've come here from –" Holding out his and Anna's wedding band circlet hands, Kristoff, somewhat laughing inside at the mere thought of his rough and tumble life partner being described in such a belittling fashion, was quite unruffled himself by the pair of brothers' open machismo show of overbearing and pompous force.

The calm and composed Ice Harvester begins to answer the aggressive men's queries civilly. After all, the just man in Kristoff was aware that he and Anna _were_ in the wrong for trespassing, and should answer properly, even the crudely veiled, immorality demanding questions.

Bulda had raised her boy to be a well mannered, upright, God-fearing young man. Kristoff wasn't going to leave that teaching behind, even in a warmongering kingdom like the Southern Isles of Denmark.

"Ouch!" But that was when Anna's not-so-peaceful little size six foot crunches down her husband's enormous size fourteen shoe size, her big mouth about to step them both into it now with a contrived falsehood.

"We're from the agency that one of the Princess' called to hire as special musicians for the party of the King! Yes!" Anna's overactive imagination blurts out as she nearly strangles Kristoff with the strapped lute around his neck as physical musical evidence to her claim.

"You've been hired to sing at the King's birthday celebration tomorrow? Hmm…interesting..?" Wandering away deeper into the maze as he thinks, Berte continues to stroke his pointed facial hair as he considers this new fact come to light in his criminal investigation.

"Was it that silly, flaky, Italian wife of Lars who employed you? That bothersome girl's always trying to be a cultural revolutionary with her newfangled notions of modern foreign music. As if the old Danish classics are not good enough for her." Princess Isabelle's bullish brother-in-law, Prince Franz, did not abide with her _moderne_ taste in operatic music and theatrical culture of the arts at all in his more primal soul that didn't care much for music it all.

Princess Isabelle of Italy was an avid supporter of the arts, after inviting renowned new opera singers and the latest Italian, French, Russian, Polish and Spanish composers of any class and societal status to play for the Royal court many times since she came to their family.

"Yep! That's us! Foreign singers for the King's birthday bash! Right, Kristly?" Perky Anna, after pasting on a huge lit-up grin at the skeptical princes looking down on her, turns to Kristoff to back her up.

Pulling up his other foot from the ground so as to not suffer such a harsh punishment as before, and letting Anna put her foot in it for both of them, despite his better judgment, the blond Snow Prince merely nods. "Yeah. That's us. Singers who just got married." Resigned to his fate, Kristoff adds with hopes that the dark eyed gentlemen may find some degree of kindness and tolerance for some crazy kissing newlywed kids, stealing precious honeymoon time away together in the depths of this romantically inviting maze.

"Hmmm... If Isabelle requested you for the party entertainment… I guess we have to let you in…" The most ample brother for his weight and muscle mass, though perhaps not the heftiest in brain matter power, Franz' attention on his captives is dashed when he catches sight of his older brother and fellow sportsmen taking another aim to shoot down an unfortunate pheasant taking flight not so far away.

 ** _BANG!_**

"Berte, what a shot! You're the greatest! I think it landed over here in the maze!" Tall, six-foot four Franz excitedly calls over the hedge top like a kid to the brown haired brother who had just let off a shot to the last stragglers of the covey of pheasants that the aristocrats had released earlier to show off their sport before the visiting dignitaries and diplomats.

"So what do you think? They claim to be some musicians Isabelle got for father's birthday party tomorrow." Franz responds, glad that one of his big brothers was here to make the ultimate decision that he, as the third youngest – or was it fourth? – did not like to make himself.

Simple Franz was not too sure of the count anymore, now that their youngest, unwanted brother Hans had been officially disowned by their father, King Herbert.

"Still sticking to their story of being hired musicians, eh?" Not as gullible as his beefy little bro, Berte eyes the couple up and down as he strokes his walnut brown Van Dyke beard. "Then, tell me, what were they doing in the maze? Should you not be with the others in the servants' quarters?" The more suspicious thirty six-year-old questions the guilty looking duo.

"We have to practice our singing together, don't we?! Would you care to hear a sample?" Anna brightly offers, her vocal cords always at the ready to bellow out a tune, as her fingers flagrantly strum some discordant notes over Kristoff's shoulder on his lute.

"No, thank you. But that still doesn't clearly explain why you, as hired servants who are specified to quarters downstairs or in the Ladegården, were taking advantage of traipsing on our private property." Berte, always wishing to be an attorney with his biting wit and cold sense of justice, continues to prosecute the case.

"Uh… They just got married." Franz offers helpfully with a nod, as Anna's toothy grin was working on the dumb lummox a bit.

"Ahh… A newlywed couple practicing _music_ together. I see." In his flat toned voice and with piercing dark green eyes surveying them up and down, Berte's less basic mind suddenly puts all of the sordid facts to light, from the young woman's flustered state of undress, to the red-faced, young man's tied tongue falling into place.

"Fine. If Isabelle wishes it. Carl!" Prince Berte's sharp, detached voice abruptly cries out for the head land caretaker of Egeskov. The gardener, after bagging the pheasant that crack shot Berte had just taken down, was in the near vicinity already, as silently expected.

"You called, Prince Berte, Sir?" The rarely addressed, sniveling elderly man with a hunched over back and matching pair of crooked squinted eyes, hobbles up to where the bearded Prince had led Anna, Kristoff and Franz out from the maze entrance.

"Escort this pair of _musicians_ – ahem – that my sister-in-law engaged, down to the servants quarters of the Ladegården complex. The children are all in the nursery there, and, as they are all females, most likely will be highly entertained by their practicing. Musically speaking, of course." Clever with his words, Berte only gives this suspicious pair clearance to the stables' secondary building section of the vast Denmark castle complex, where the castle guards in their guardhouse were stationed and could keep an eye out on them.

"That's where all the other entertainers for the performance for tomorrow's event will be gathered, following the arena games we have scheduled there to take place for Father's enjoyment." The intelligent ninth in line Prince explains to his not so keen brother as he heartily orders Kristoff and Anna, as court musicians, to be taken away to the vast stable, where the arena of his father's proud collection of equestrian horses were on display.

"Yes, Sir." Carl the gardener places one wrinkled old hand on Anna's uppity upper arm and the other on Kristoff's complying one to lead them to the Ladegården stables.

"Hey!" Glaring at the disdainful Prince of the Denmark, Anna did not appreciate being ordered about by some royal spoiled brat like she was nothing more than a servile puppy.

Although, gazing across at his wife, Kristoff was familiar with the feeling quite well himself.

"Come on, dear. Let the nice groundsman show us our quarters, so we can practice some more of our singing for the celebration." Kristoff shares an ingratiating smile with this second pair of Hans' **_friendly_** brothers that he and Anna had encountered thus far.

"I guess so."

Kristoff was glad that his feisty pants' ire had cooled down a temperature peg or two after giving Princes Berte and Franz a defiant glance beneath her kerchief. Kristoff and Anna dutifully follow Carl the Egeskov head landscaper towards the Ladegården stable section of the Castle complex.

On the way there, the shaking, trembling old servant of the Crown pauses to expertly bag the shot-down bird, ready for the feathering in a scalded bath. Carl the gardener stuffs the large plump pheasant that deadeye Prince Berte had killed earlier in a rucksack bag.

{"Ew! Pheasant for dinner doesn't sound all too tasty anymore, all of a sudden."} A grossed out Anna comments to Kristoff through their psychic link when the deceased bird's limp neck protrudes from the bag that the gardener had carelessly tossed over shoulder as the trio continues to walk towards the stable.

{"Yeah. I know what you mean, Baby. By the way, his name was Milton." The Wind Whisperer mentally sends out his silent RIP condolences to Milton the pheasant's feathered family and friends watching from not so far on a hill at a fearful distance near Egeskov's tree line.

"Poor Milton… I am **only** eating bread and potatoes tonight." Anna defiantly announces aloud, causing gnarled old Carl to give the strange child an easy glance over his other shoulder.

{"As distasteful as it seems, staring us right in the face now, it is the circle of life, Anna. Even holy folks in the Bible ate the meat of the animals God put here on earth."}

Kristoff, even as a man of nature, still recognized the red-blooded male within him that enjoyed the juicy side of beef, every now and then.

"Well, I'll get my protein from peanuts and beans from now on, thank you very much." Extremist at moments, already gassy Anna retorts in her inimitable way as her big eyes take in all the barbaric practices so cruelly on parade in this lair of hunters at Egeskov.

Then, to top it off, as Carl opens the Ladegarten door, a disgusted speechless Anna and gulping back, sickenened in shock Kristoff, are greeted by a distasteful bevy of trophy heads and pelts and antler horns of every class and genus variety hanging upon the heraldic walls.

"More like a circle of _death…"_ Anna comments dryly on these overly aggressive Danes, killing for bloodsport and the drive to be conquerors.

"Big heroes…" Anna derides whichever big, strong strapping man gunned down the sweet little red fox who, for some pitiable reason, catches her glance. The slender red fox's forlorn eyes, forever frozen in taxidermy, looked so sad and pleading to live, that Anna wanted to cry.

Perhaps, even more so, because the wily, unwanted creature reminded her of someone she was searching for, too.

Sensing her discomfort, Kristoff wraps a warm arm around his compassionate bride's shoulders. Solemnly the couple tread in silent mourning through the wall of horrors, aghast, as so many innocent beasts, one after another lining the trophy walls, gaze down at them now with lifeless, glassy stares…

* * *

 ** _Hundreds of kilometers to the north, in a pristine white castle shining on a hill that was as crystal clear as the beautiful pure heart of its icy designer…_**

"What's taking her so long?" Another impatient ginger member of the royal family of Arendelle asks the sky in the exact same tone as his youngest child who was, unbeknownst to himself, beyond the southern border of Norway.

King Agdar had been taking a break from assembling the wood and ice crafted sculptures of model ships that he had been drafting all afternoon with royal carpenters, his friend Minister Kai and a bouncing batch of eager snowgies on the assembly line.

The industrious, recuperating King had artfully created all sizes and classes of model ships from his mind, with many playful snowgies to serve as the vessels' happy willing crews.

There were Kommander snowgies and their broad brimmed naval hats, Lietenant snowgies, snowgies in their scarves, Ensign snowgies, Midshipman snowgies and even below deck Galley crew snowgies all on board the miniature ships. There were lifelike ice ball cannon gunners and helmsman at the wheels that Agdar and Kai installed.

With Idun and Gerda's input, the avid naval enthusiasts had furnished the galley below deck crew to set up a dining mess, with ice lime pies, snow pudding and ice cream cake ( _A snowgie all-time favorite)._

Intelligent Queen Idun had come up with this agreeable pastime for her husband to wile away the afternoon and at the same time sharpen the Ice King's skills with his newly acknowledged powers.

What better amusement than to employ the bored with target practice and ice slide building gifted monarch, than to place him in one of his avidly much-loved roles as Naval Grand Admiral of the Fleet?

Even a miniature version of the Sjoforsvaret's proud sea-faring vessels.

Chief Advisor and Royal Minister of the Court, Kai and faithful Arendelle Housekeeper Gerda, as old friends of Agdar's as far back as he could remember, had concurred with intuitive Queen Idun about her husband's psychological needs.

So, in order to expand his ice gifts and talents, Kai had ordered the workman he had brought with them to assemble a large wooden encasement to place in the corner on the ice marbleized floor of Elsa's Ice Palace Great Hall. His carpenters crafted a reinforced wooden form to serve as a miniature ocean.

Once their ingenious contrivance had been revealed to the King, Agdar had filled the cavity with soft slush snow that resourceful Kai had re-applied Oaken's movable heater stove, soon turned to a makeshift sea of water for the King to float his ice ship.

The onboard Snowgies had to learn quickly some discipline, lest they tumble off the sides of the complexly crafted naval recreations of their brilliant royal Admiral, and melt into the 'sea'.

But King Agdar's commanding attitude of stern leadership was paralleled by his inwardly displayed patient compassion to rescue repeatedly even the smallest, most clumsy snowgie sailor. The army of giddy snow creatures who loved Elsa as their 'Mommy' were soon proud to join up and serve under 'Grandpa' Admiral Bernadotte's mini loyal navy.

So now, with his real sail applied, ice-masted frigates and frosted little schooners all successfully set to sail on the monarch's own personal ocean with enough ballast to counter the weight of the ice applied, lifelong naval sailor King Agdar, with an accomplished smile, felt he was ready for his next challenge.

"Agdar? I must say, your little Navy in there looks quite ship-shape and Bristol-fashioned, as they say. It's sweet to see those tiny snowgies' little paws busily setting sail and hoisting anchor, just as you trained them, my love." Queen Idun peers around the intricate ice-latticed pedestals adorning Elsa's ornamental upper level palace arcade that led to the open lunette window's ice glazed glass double doors.

After helping Gerda and the other female servants rustle up an exquisite dinner for her hardworking King in the heated servant's wing of Elsa's grand Ice kingdom, the thin framed Swedish woman had returned to find Kai still 'monitoring' (a euphemism for adults ' _playing'_ ) the model ships he and his King had assembled together. But a bored Agdar had already left.

"They seem to be enjoying their new arms very much indeed. Now, that they've grown accustomed to not shedding them so much as they haul anchors and steer at the wheel, that is. That was very astute of you to grant all those poor armless creatures new appendages. How are yours feeling today, min alskare?" Idun asks empathetically, passing through the open doors to massage her cool husband's miraculously renewed left arm that she had stood beside and cared for so long when it and Agdar's left leg had been sheared off in self-amputation for those five terrible, unspeakable years.

"Yes…it was…" Agdar answers distractedly, causing Idun to put her hands on her hips with a smirked smile.

"You are a magnificently modest model of a man, aren't you, my King?" The Queen teases in a nominal tone of voice, already knowing that her mate was not paying the least bit of attention to her, from the abstract look on his handsome face, ten thousand miles away.

"Hmm? Oh! Forgive me, my love. A bit lost in thought. But, yes – _ahem, pardon me_ \- Much better, day by day, Idun. I am feeling more myself and quite stable under your tender ministrations, now, my Darling." A tad red-faced in shame for his impolite absent-mindedness, King Agdar assures her as he pauses to glance his pale icy blue eyes down at his left side's miraculously reinstated missing limbs, flexing his bicep and fisting his able hand appreciatively.

But from the forced smile on his lips, it didn't take Idun long to work out that her other half was feeling restless again. The past few days' constructive amusements she had prescribed for him, since Elsa left for the Continent, had passed into anxious apprehension for his absent daughter.

Idun instinctively knew Agdar would be upstairs on the balcony veranda, overlooking the lovely vast countryside that he understood all too well did not belong to him, but, by the Grace of God, that he again belonged to it.

"An ort for your thoughts?" With the colloquial phrase using their nation's smallest coinage denomination, Idun quietly approaches her husband from behind and drapes her thin arms around his once again robust shoulders.

Feeling the uncertain icy coolness exuding from his firm chest, she hugs her Agdar all the tighter, with every bit of her warmth she could muster.

"I believe you will require a large pail full of speciedalers in trade for the many sentiments spinning around in my concerned head at this moment, my Swedish Delight." The King of Norway, with a fond glance to the woman embracing him from behind, says with a small simpered smile etched on his comely features, as his cool hand pats hers upon his chest.

"Elsa?" She asks tentatively of the single, most important word to both their hearts at this moment.

"What else?" The nervous father answers with an ice puffing, breathy sigh and wary smile at his physical inadequacy to accompany his fragile child on her far-off voyage across the sea.

"I didn't like allowing her to go off on her own alone in such a fashion, all the way to Corona and back. Perhaps, we should catch up with her, now that I am stabilized."

"Agdar. Elsa is a strong young lady now. You and I both witnessed firsthand how determined and stable she is with her powers now. If our big girl was able with her well-honed gifts as Ice Queen, to face down and defeat such a villainous monster as that vile Draugen that evil pirate had become, then why do you still worry for her merely traveling to peaceful Corona to bring my sister the good news of our return to the living?" She whispers saucily in her husband's cool ear.

"Do you not trust your own child – our nation's coronated royal Queen – in her judgment? Elsa, still needs our support. But I think she could benefit from a dose of our trust most of all, Agdar." With a mother's wisdom, Idun begins to work the charm of her clever words and her warm physical nurturing on her anxious uptight spouse.

Both of which, as usual, were taking their gentle influencing effect on her partner's discontent psyche.

"Besides, is there a more frightening defender than Marshma— _Snow Beast –_ at any woman's side? That enormous, faithful bodyguard of hers certainly would intimidate any potential threat. I am at my leisure here. And so should you be, my King. Elsa is in no danger. Travel simply takes patience and time. The same goes for you, if you are to fully recover, you need peace of mind. Nurse's orders." Idun and Agdar had an extremely close relationship, their bond over the sheltered years in Arendelle and forced isolation at the hands of that evil pirate, had grown even stronger than ever.

And she loved playing songstress wife/ playful nurse to her man all the while.

"It's not my brave girl that I don't trust. She has indeed proven herself capable in presence of mind and heart for her country, as well as displaying extreme talent in her ice magic."

Agdar speaks proudly of Elsa, fully confident in his once shy, retiring, self-conscious child's newfound powerful prowess in ice abilities and his implicit trust in her decisions. After all, Agdar raised his Crown Princess to inherit his mantle of duty to their country someday, (Norway thankfully not a male-oriented primogeniture kingdom) so he had conviction in his daughter's decisions.

Unless they were pertaining to that smooth-talking, attractive, charismatic rogue of a Danish Prince whom Elsa's heart, despite her Papa's better judgment, seemed highly receptive to.

"It's that clever as a fox, come-hither eyed, ambitious roving Dane you sent her to go collect as traveling companion who I don't trust…How did you ever convince me to allow her chase after _**him**? _ I must intercede immediately, before there are irreversible consequences, that my little girl Elsa is too inexperienced and naive in the ways of this world, and men in general, to realize... _"_ The King adds the suspicion-laden, disparaging line under his icy breath, as he strokes his debonair mustache back rather self-importantly and jealous of sharing his daughter's attentions with.

"Did you say something, min alskare?" Not letting his grouchy mumble go entirely unchallenged, Queen Idun makes the fluttering, innocent eyed query with a pair of batting eyelids above her intoxicating indigo orbs up at him. She peers around Agdar's rigid frame where the royal couple stood on the balcony of the Ice Palace overlooking Arendelle far down below the viewpoint of the North Mountain they were high atop almost the pinnacle thereof.

" **I** _do_ hope our Elsa is having luck in finding those two dear brothers, who were so invaluable in _our_ rescue, as well as the salvation of our great country from that monster. Then they can return to Arendelle and be lauded by our people with the medals and commendations you decreed to bestow upon them for their extraordinary chivalry and service to Norway." With a pleased smile, Idun states her case openly to the, at times difficult, at moments adorable, complex man who owned her heart for almost as long as she could remember.

"Yes, Idun. Arendelle will execute its obligatory award honor ceremony as I stated earlier." Agdar responds, his leadership and sense of duty to uphold his kingdom's family name with pride was never in question.

Although…

"…I've been meaning to speak to you concerning _that_ Prince Hans of the Southern Isles…" Agdar begins to phrase his own gnawing doubts about that royal Dane. "Though he was indeed mannerly, exceptional and gallant to our cause on this deadly mission, Anna spoke of young Westergaard being unscrupulous in the past. But as a God-fearing man, I do submissively bow to our Lord's holy edict for forgiveness, if penitently sought."

' _Judge not, lest you be judged_.' _(Matthew 5:1)_ King Agdar hears Jesus' Biblical Gospel words, he himself taught from the chapel pulpit, reflected back to him in Elsa's righteous voice in bold defense of this young naval officer when the King was about to pass maritime corporal punishment.

"However—" The good father still had his reservations, though for his little girl's welfare, that he wished to discuss with his partner in their daughters' upbringing, but Idun cuts him and his brooding doubts off at the pass.

"—I've already been planning in my mind all of the preparations required for the celebratory festivities of such an honored, prestigious event as the Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf for Arendelle! Coupled with our return announcement, the people of our nation, _our home,_ will, no doubt, be euphoric with joy and praise to God for this amazing blessing of His Grace." Moved to the edge of emotional tears, Idun sincerely bubbles over with excitement at being alive and able to enjoy serving on behalf of the good citizens as Royal Hostess for such a happy state event as passing deserved awards in gratitude for services above and beyond the call of duty to the worthy heroes.

"Indeed, Idun, the Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf is an esteemed honor that, as King, I am fully willing to fulfill, as per duty calls in recognition of our conquering heroes. But as for the attachment our unsullied Elsa may have inadvertently formed for that Danish Prince along the journey…" Agdar makes another stab at interrupting his gushing wife on this serious matter weighing on his paternal heart, but to no avail.

"Yes, yes, my darling. We all have become fond of that gentlemanly Prince Hans for his valiant and daring, repeated sacrifices in protection for our girls. That's why he and, Prince Eugene, and Anna's Snow Prince Kristoff all deserve our nation's highest awards!" Idun purposely brushes off Agdar's worries with her winning smiles as she continues to overwhelm him with her enthusiasm.

"On the guest list, I must be sure to include dignitaries of every nation we have trade ties to, and royal visitors as well, lest their noses be broken! Then there's the menu Gerda and Johanne will have well in hand. And we'll invite all of our great musicians to the open castle celebration out in the courtyard if weather permits. Oh! Between you and Elsa, we needn't worry so much about that! An outdoor ice dome over that amazing skating rink will certainly wow our guests! The citizens of Arendelle will all have front row seats!" Idun's giggles tickle her husband's neck until he too was smiling with her gleefulness.

"And of course, I'll leave it to you to compose a special invitation that I'll have Kristoff send to his Mother, the Snow Queen, whom I came to know quite well. She's a lovely person. I do hope she can attend." The dark brown haired woman moves forward in her speech, laughing at how Agdar's eyesbrows furrowed at the first mention of Anna's young man's name, then quickly softened to bow in respect to the Snow Queen's prominent title being added to her son's.

"You are so right, my dearest, to remember that Sovereign Lady of the Winter amid all of your arrangements for our celebration ceremony that we will be holding shortly. But I really would like to address the delicate subject of my new Vise Admiral and Elsa—" Agdar closes his eyes and throws his hands up in the air when Idun once again overrides his explicit question, this time with accolades.

"Oh! I must say how I admire when, as Grand Admiral of our Navy, you were so very adroit to recognize that young man's virtues, Agdar. I, too, will never forget how he single-handedly dared to face that awful sea monster in order to rescue Elsa from being drowned. That astounding, remarkable feat, in and of itself, was worthy of awarding him our highest honor, the Grand Cross, I believe you call it?" Making it a tad difficult for Agdar to oppose her glowing praise of Hans as he wished due to her spin, Idun pauses in her ramble for some viewer participation from her spellbound husband when she senses his already tensed muscles tighten exponentially at her final phrasing.

"The Grand Cross?! Only I, as King _and_ Admiral of the Fleet, currently hold the honor of wearing St. Olaf's Grand Cross!" Agdar says in jaw-dropped indignation, as he forcefully spins his wife, dangling at his neck with her wheedling wiles, around to face the astonished man.

"Ooh, Grand Admiral Bernadotte! I do love it when you're so forceful and vehement. You **are** _fit_ enough again and **fully** _ready_ to preside over such an august event for Arendelle, very soon, my King." Agdar's wily Queen coyly traces her dainty finger down his reinvigorated left arm, over his torso lines all around his firm chest and up his dignified neck line to toy at his straight lips beneath that tickled dapper mustache.

The forty-two year old monarch of the land intakes a deep breath of the fresh air whistling through the mountainside of the Ice Palace, intermingled with Idun's wildflower scent that pervaded his every sense.

"I was _born_ ready, my Swedish Delight." Agdar engagingly quotes his younger, peppy daughter's constant go-to motto for whatever challenge the ginger girl with the indomitable spirit faced.

The bold and cocky statement causes Idun to share a wry, flirtatious smile with her husband, knowing she had won the battle of stubborn wills tonight as the sun was sinking beneath the frosty mountain horizon.

"Admiral…That gleam in your eye makes me positively yearn to set sail, raise the halyard, and un-batten down the hatches, under your command. That is, if you're as able-bodied as that brash, eager to sweep-me-off-my-feet, young Admiral of the Fleet I seem to recall." Matching that icy gleam in his eye with a glimmer of her own, Idun leads her King from his cool world's bleak doldrums as she kisses each of his cold palms, nibbling playfully on each frosty digit as she moves her body closer to his. A pair of inviting eyes, accompanied by her tender caresses under the dusky twilight, dance as her industrious hands move up and down his chest—

 _Just for warmth.._.

"Madame! Are you attempting to debauch your convalescing King?!" Agdar, already accepting her intimate touch, looks down at his lively and spirited little wife with feigned indignation at her masterful manipulations of his mental iceberg traversing, listless emotions.

"Just testing the waters of what state of recovery you're currently in, Your Majesty." Idun responds with a saucy bite of her lower lip as she stands back to look him over thoroughly.

"After my _assessment_ , we'll see if you're shipshape enough to travel from our secret icy lair."

Queen Idun continues the navy term jabs and innuendo laced jibes at her lover and irreplaceable soul mate, as face to face she uses her designing crafty hands to cup her husband's mouth into maneuvering a thrilled speechless Agdar into a pleasurable kiss.

The thin petite Queen of Arendelle then leads her mesmerized mate by the hand into their upstairs bedroom area across the way, winsomely humming her magical tune of 'Greensleeves' they had first met with, all that time ago. Agdar, stimulated by the sweet memories as well, carries her in the rest of the way. His cryokinetic gifts he felt were quite under his willpower's stabilized control, for he would never endanger his precious jewel of a wife were they not.

And as the double doors of the magnificent Ice Palace main bedroom suite softly close behind the frisky pair of married royals, a volley of snowball cannon fire ensues between the icy vessels downstairs, stationed inside the ornamental columned hallway entrance.

The snowgie crews onboard the duty bound ships that their Admiral had commissioned them all to, pitch play-war with one another. Their fired cannons explode simultaneously as the cannon snowballs collide and de-solidify into crystallized iridescent snowflakes to shower down all over the ooh-ing and ahh-ing snow creations naively bouncing about as they look upwards in awe.

Snowflakes were melting into the ocean created to swim upon the marbleized verglas ice floors in the Great Hall Entrance of Elsa's formerly immaculate Ice Palace, where now an epic naval battle in snowgie history had taken place beneath the starburst cathedral ceiling and artistically hanging icicle-drop chandeliers.

And the icy fireworks were going off up the long flight of spiral stairs as well, as they had not been for five long, deprived years…

* * *

 _Søværnet_ – Royal Navy of Denmark

 _Yoike –_ Saami poetry retelling an uncontrived story rhythmically set to sing-songy accapella

 _Sjoforsvaret_ – Royal Norwegian Navy

 _Min alskare_ – 'My love' in Swedish

 _Speciedaler_ \- Norwegian currency in 19th century, equal to approx. 8 dollars at the time

 _Ort_ – smallest Norwegian coinage in 19th century equal to about 4 cents, at the time

* * *

 _Hello, Frozen fans out there!_

 _Sorry for the long wait, but my Dragon Voice Recognition software was on the fritz this week! (As was my sewing machine! Guess it's a bad week for modern gadgets! Just to drive your crazy authoress bonkers!)_

 _So, what did you think of all the (ehem) verbal interaction between the two couples featured in this chapter? Kristanna, were serenading one another again with that beaut of a Jonathan Groff duet song, "Lucky", which was written by the talented songwriter, Jason Mraz. You should all really check it out! The song's a masterpiece, so well delivered by our silky voiced Kristoff voice actor, and his gorgeous duet partner! I must give due credit to the creators of the song! (Thanks for your heads-up on the writer's name Banana2014-sama! ^_^)_

 _And we gave Agdun some airtime as to what's going on up North Mountain-ways! ^_~ Mama Idun always knows her way around her man! I see where Anna gets some of her feisty-pants-ness from! Elsa & Anna's parents are so so funny! They're a joy to write!_

 _This chapter was originally going to be longer, to include some more of the new characters, but I felt it sufficiently verbose enough to publish as is tonight, and save the rest untyped pages for the next chapter when I hopefully get my 'Dragy' up and working again!_

 _So, the portraits I promised that Setsuna made will go up next time, along with the chapter where the Princes & Princesses of Egeskov will be center stage, too. Really, truly! I will be soon! I can''t wait for you to see them! When you do next week, be sure to tell me which prince of Hans' 12 brothers (Eugene too?) is your favorite. (I know which one struck me dumbfounded giggling with glee as dead-on perfect as to my characterization of him #0#)_

 _Please review 'I Was Born Ready'! Looking forward to your juicy comments! ^_^_

 _And, if you haven't updated your follows for this particular continuation of the story recently, don't forget to follow and favorite this new sequel story, "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" (It's my new sequel to my sequel with the same title! It's Part 2 of the beautiful Bible verse!)_

 _God bless you, wherever you are in these dog days of summer! Keep Frozen cool!_

 _HarukaKou_


	14. Chapter 14 - Be Our Guest

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 14**

 **"Be Our Guest"**

After Princess Gloria Lujza had ended her polished piano playing of classical music with a loud crescendo that would wake any slumbering maiden, Rapunzel jumps to her feet. The morning sick (even past sunset hours) young mother-to-be had, as her new Portuguese princess friend had intended, drifted off in a peaceful slumber to the soft lullaby music of Chopin that Lujza had given a stirring recital thereof for the last half hour.

"Oh! Pardon me for dozing off on you like that! You must be so offended! Where are my manners?!" With a start, Rapunzel sits straight up from the surprisingly comfortable settee that the exhausted girl had collapsed upon amid the soft music.

"Not at all, my dear girl! It was my hope that you, as an expectant pregnant lady, as I well remember – _three times, mind you!_ – would enjoy a short snooze before we are called for supper with the family." Princess Gloria Lujza responds to Rapunzel in her warm, generous manner. She quickly crosses the room to brush back several strands of Rapunzel's stray brown hairs from her brow as Rapunzel stifles a yawn and rubs at her sleepy eyes.

"Peiter just left our audience to dress for dinner. Sometimes the men primp more than we women! But you probably understand that, with your allegedly good-looking thief. But wait until you see my man in his naval uniform! So dashing!" Gloria—or Lujza, as her friends called her—begins to explain as she tidies her own hair up, looking in the Chippendale style mirror hanging on the wall of this music room that matched all the rest of the designer furniture. "He's a Lieutenant-Kommander in the Navy, you know." Lujza proudly states, tying her crimson red dress belt tighter to at least try to be half as skinny as the diminutive Prussian girl in her presence.

At ease in Lujza's presence, the Coronian princess felt so strong a bond already with the friendly Portuguese royal that she smiles a sweetly sleepy, grateful smile up at her. That is, until Pascal scurries up to her shoulder to point out the time on the pocket watch Eugene had given Rapunzel two birthdays ago.

 _Don't ask for the receipt, Blondie._

"Oh, the time!" Rapunzel suddenly comes up from a smirky reverie of her funny lover giving her a questionable present to recall that she was supposed to have already left Egeskov to meet back up with Anna and Kristoff. "Anna is gonna freak out!" Rapunzel cries out in a tizzy, pulling at her short-cropped brown hair as she stumbles her palpitating feet back into her plum colored shoes that the free-spirited girl had slipped out of while listening to Lujza play the pianoforte.

"What goes on, meu querido (my dear)? Who is this 'Anna' you are so fearful of?" Gloria steps back in her vibrant red gown, to inquire of Rapunzel with a furrowed brow.

"I promised to report to—I mean, um, send them a signal, I mean, meet with—some old friends in town! But I'm so late they'll be worried something happened to me! They didn't know I'd be staying this long, but I was so hoping to meet the king…" Rapunzel herself was freaking out. Her upset tummy from before was exacerbated in her panic as she attempts to pull herself together.

"Could you get Peiter to take this carpetbag with Olaf in it, to my room? He's napping, and I'll be right back!"

Gloria nods with a laugh as she peeks in the carpetbag to see Olaf's frosty snores as Rapunzel bolts out from the open door with her pesky shoes finally on straight.

 _Why do I still mix up and left and right?!_

But the artistic girl is halted in her race when she crashes into a brightly dressed young woman in a vivid orange and floral blue print, looking merely eighteen years of age, who was also on her way out the door.

"Boshe moi! My precious Blysk! How dare you crash into us?! Is this old haunted house also unsafe to take my well-mannered, high class, purebreed Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka puppy out for a walk?" The jostled, dramatically haughty and heavily-accented teenager was adorned in more jewels than Rapunzel had ever seen on a single woman before in her life.

From the flawless pure glimmer of each jewel, the Coronian princess had the distinct feeling that every one of the multi-colored gemstones set in that ostentatious silver necklace, matching bracelets and earrings, were priceless.

"Oh, pardon me! I'm such a klutz! I guess I wasn't watching where I was going. I'm sorry for bumping into you and your cute little puppy. Hello, doggy. Oh!" With a self-deprecating smile, Rapunzel begins to apologize, though the real fault of the run-in was the taller, Russian woman's oblivious gait, as she now looks disdainfully down her nose at her Prussian counterpart. Her dog, similarly snobbish, then tries to nip Rapunzel's petting hand.

"Yes, well you should be! Nyuclujya Jyubuschka _!_ ( _clumsy girl_ )! You are quite fortunate my Blysk did not suffer from your clumsiness or we may have had to speak with our Oteu ( _Father_ ) about sanctioning the already strained trade relations with this country, and wherever you hail from as well! Won't we, my sweet little Blysk? My poor little konfitka ( _sweetie_ )! Did the silly girl with the nasty hair try to hurt you?!" Snobbish Princess Eugenia coddles her pumpkin orange dog to her cheek. The Russian Tsvetnaya lapdog's wild mane of overgrown shaggy curled hair somewhat resembled the twin brother, Rune, that she may or may not be engaged to anymore as of this visit, when the double Russian-Danish union was to be officially announced.

"Oookay. I'm really sorry but I have to dash for now. We'll talk again later, excuse me. Oops, sorry, sorry, oops, gotta go!" Rapunzel blinks at the young woman several times and bites her lip as she trots backwards and away down the hall. The cocoa-brown haired princess backtracks while she apologizes profusely to the proud-eyed, uppity Russian princess. Rapunzel then proceeds to bump into many of the other royal women who were just emerging from their rooms and making their way down the stairs as well after changing into evening dress, to join their husbands who were already entertaining the gathering dinner guests.

Once Rapunzel launches herself down the steps without killing herself and reaches the first floor, she winds and weaves through the parade of prince and princess royals, intermingling with the visiting dignitaries and ambassadors as they all promenade, arm in arm, into the large Banquet Hall.

All of the royal Princes of Denmark had changed into their dashing pale grey and black velvet collared jackets with gold rope aiguillette to conduct this decorous dinner celebration with all the pomp and circumstance that the Danes had to offer their delegation of visitors from far and wide to their kingdom.

First came imperious Vise Admiral Crown Prince Kaleb in his full Royal attire, with golden epaulette decorated naval jacket, his regal purple silk shirt, vest and charcoal black cravat tie, and his British wife on his arm. His pleasantly plump Princess Emma was in a lavender and white lace modest gown, with strings of pearls done up in her high brown bun of curls.

Next there was second in line Rear Admiral Prince Anders and his penetrating shadowy blue eyes that gave him a foreboding glare beneath grayish-brown thick sculpted eyebrows. His sinister demeanor seemed to match his dark indigo inner vest and deep maroon tie. But Anders' thin, little, waif—the sweet-faced and trusting Polish Princess Frederika had fresh flowers placed in her tight russet ringlets along with white organza decorating her bodice's puffed indigo sleeves that was entirely contradictory.

Wearing the black corduroy vest of his obligatory _Søværnet_ uniform, third son in this princely line, Flotilla Admiral Prince Lars, had been in his element holding court in his library empire down the hall with the male guests earlier. But here, he was discontent. At this moment a messily thrown together Lars was being worked upon by his wife to neaten up his askew light brown limp mop of hair that fell down flat over his intelligent, yet submissive, forehead brow. Lars' wife, Princess Isabella of Italy, with her golden mane of deep yellow blonde sausage curls carefully arranged upon her lovely head, was wearing an Italian styled, off-the-shoulder Venetian lace trimmed gray chiffon bodice overlay as she rather wifely rearranges her studious mate's never-long-parted-from spectacles to his scraggly bearded face.

Next, Rapunzel had to delicately sift her way through the enforced cold distance between the compulsory coupling of fourth in line Lieutenant Admiral Prince Ivers and Princess Marguerite of Orleans. The French woman had dutifully appeared from the cubby hole she was obscured in earlier for her auburn haired, moustached, and soul patch stubble bearded husband who was quite dashing in his naval uniform, wine-colored vest and rusty cravat tie. Marguerite, replete in her stunning ivory venise lace trimmed wine color gown with the fluted sleeves and huge sweeping skirt, had left her solitude to join him. Although, she kept a requisite mutual distance to still be appurtenant in a proper show of face as a content husband and wife couple. But if Marguerite had ever deemed to meet Prince Ivers' startling blue eyes drinking in her golden blonde beauty, she may have been surprised.

In contrast, slightly rotund, fifth in line Commodore Prince Mattias, who was never fond of physical outdoor activities, was out of shape from sitting too long behind a desk counting miserly money under his thick walrus mustache. He may have been making an attempt to look older than he was at thirty-nine years of age. But his baby brown eyes, showy green corduroy vest and dusky pink cravat tie made it a bit difficult to equate him with a respectable long beard who generally ran stock markets in financial quarters. His bright eyed, plaited tan hair wife, Princess Elizabeth of Belgium, almost ten years his junior, was too lively and modern and buoyant a girl, in stark contrast with his stuffy attitude. Mattias was always trying to be traditionally orthodox, continually so uptight for the approval of his banking community that he was making himself old before his time.

"Are you going outside, dear? I'll be sure to save you seat at the table near us!" Friendly, attentive Elizabeth calls out, embarrassing her husband who was, as usual, making deals with several diplomats whom he was walking into the dining room with.

A scurrying away Rapunzel waves back with a thumbs-up gratefully to the sociable Princess who was the only one to notice her so far.

That is, until the Prussian royal spots in the corner of her eye, dashing and debonair sixth in line Kommander Senior Grade Prince Didrik, who too was sporting his gray naval uniform with a dapper pink vest and golden yellow cravat, looking directly at her. The Casanova of Egeskov also had his roving hunter's eye on her delectably dancing trail out the front door. Stroking his handlebar mustache as he begins to stealthily trail Rapunzel, the suave Danish royal Prince takes a raffish quick step towards the door in louche pursuit.

But fortunately for innocent Rapunzel, Didrik's exotic eyed Spanish Princess wife, Princess Antoinia of Spain, also had noted the lithe Prussian Princess' escape, and how her husband had noticed it, too.

Princess Antoinetta, as she preferred to be called, steps her long peacock feather-in-hair plummage self purposely in her rakish mate's direct path. She halts him with a single threatening glare and gives her six foot three inch, tall, dark and gorgeous husband an irate accusatory glance as she puts her hands on the hips of her pretty pink, trailing to the ground floral dress.

Without even missing a step, Prince Didrik spins midstride on his well turned heel as he dismisses her demands with a heedless smirk and he walks away into the banquet hall with no more than a devil-may-care cursory shrug back at her.

Outfitted in his briny teal and blues, Naval Kommander Prince Jurgen's piercing dark brown eyes and horseshoe mustache, along with a sepia ponytail that completed his look as a rugged Navy man of the sea. 37-year-old Jurgen was probably the Westergaard brother who enjoyed his mandatory commission as officer of his father's Navy most. His pride in the sea had secured seventh son of the realm Jurgen on board ships for years, until he had finally attained his highest possible rank of ship's Kommander that he so desired. But his love for the ocean kept this teal vested, blue tie sailor longing for a life that a _landcrabbe_ could never achieve. And that career left his young wife of just three years, Princess Adelaide of Austria, now accompanying her husband in her lovely pale teal and blue frock, alone most nights with two pairs of twins in their thrilling threes and their terrible twos on her hands. But that suited his authoritarian, half Italian, half Austrian wife Adelaide just fine. In fact, that's the way the compartmentalizing, strict and firm, compulsively neat woman preferred it.

Kaptain Lieutenant Franz was a big man by any standard. His newly applied chin curtain and wild mane of thick curled carob brown hair style he had picked up in Africa, as well as a tall muscular stature that had a hard time being contained within the _Søværnet_ naval uniform. But the tenth in line prince's teal tie and brown vest complemented this tanned skin big-game hunter's rugged, earthy look. That robust appeal of this Danish prince drew young, quiet Princess Amalia of the Netherlands in to marry Prince Franz just last year. What the 21-year-old, self-conscious, sweet tempered modestly dressed in beige taupe young Princess didn't bargain for was that violent Franz, when frustrated, often took it out on her. But the shy, introverted royal young woman with the side winged mousy brown hair and plain, not showy features, would never complain of her brutish husband. Franz only had some anger management issues that she believed her love and faithful patience in him would someday bring out the goodness of his heart. _He just didn't know his own strength some times._ Kind Amalia was, even now hanging on her abusive husband's arm, trying to cover up her reddened blemishes and bruises from the rest of the family.

Now, Lieutenant Kommander Prince Berte was a different case entirely. His coldness came from his calculating mind, his beating heart the furthest thing from it most of the time. Prince Berte may have been a distant ninth in line in this Danish kingdom, but from an early age, the bored, deep green eyed, cool as a cucumber 36-year-old in his aqua corduroy vest and chocolate brown tie was pompous enough to think that his smarts and cunning deserved to own the world. Perhaps that inner confidence drove him to grow out his walnut Vandyke beard to impress. But his cold, flatline voice was anything but awe-inspiring, even though his young blonde bride Hermine, with her tall curly bun and frizzed fringe yellow blonde hair, hung on her husband's every word.

German Princess Hermine of Waldeck in a pale aqua frilly gown, pauses while her Berte was engaged in conversation with some Czech diplomat, to peek out the window to watch Rapunzel outside kneel down to the ground after holding an interesting, fairly lengthy one-sided conversation with what appeared to be her empty hand.

"Eek! It's a frog!" Dumb blonde Hermine can't help but squeal aloud as she witnesses her new friend of a Prussian Princess lean down and kiss the forehead of the color changing, bug-eyed reptile and then send it on its way to scamper like quicksilver across the sunsetting front entrance path of Egeskov to hop over the lowered drawbridge railing just-in-time as it rises for the final batch of late guests to be heralded in.

"Is her frog going to turn into a handsome prince? Like in the storybooks? _Sigh._ So romantic to kiss an ugly frog and he turns out to be the gorgeous man of your dreams. _Sigh_." Naive Princess Hermine daydreams that fairytales like that can come true in her youthful mindset still.

"Kiss a frog to turn into a Royal Prince? Don't we have enough of those boring boys around here? I think I'd much prefer for the little froggie to turn into an exciting matador, or maybe that thrilling roving eyed jewel thief of Rapunzel's I've heard so many rumors about. The mysterious Flynn Rider…" After seeing that Olaf was tucked safely in the carpetbag in Rapunzel's room, lively Princess Gloria Lujza comments with a wink, wholly unperturbed as she and her bright red Portuguese gown wades through the crowd of dignitaries and visitors on her big-boned husband Peiter's strong arm. Eighth in line, Kommander Kaptain Prince Peiter was indeed as dashing as his wife described in his pale gray _Søværnet naval jacket, red inner vest and violet cravat tie._

 _"I would enjoy shoving my own reptile in the back of my pocket most of the time as well. Maybe that would restrain his wanderlust tendencies." Overhearing the conversation outside the Banquet Hall, Antoinetta says in answer to Gloria's tease when the Portuguese Princess sits down beside her at the dining room table._

"A frog?! _Boishe moi_ (Oh, my God!)! What are those doing jumping about in the Castle?! Where? In here?! Don't you get warts if they touch you!? I hate those creepy crawly slimy things!" Eighteen-year-old Princess Maria of Russia had chosen just this moment, before most of the other guests gathered could register Hermine's high-pitched wail at the distasteful slimy vermin that were all too prevalent in this nearby fjorden and moat surrounded castle of the Southern Isles, to come downstairs in inquisitive search of her hapless fiancé.

This young Russian Princess, in her fancy, bright yellow rose and fireworks designed youthful dress, unlike her snobbish, easily offended elder sister who was laden down in jewelry and silver and gold and pearls, had an undeniable curiosity. Maria had a curiousness that drew her from the suite of rooms that she, her sister and their Russian father, the Czar, had been solemnly sulking – ahem – _occupying_ in protest of the resentful argument. After all, the King of Russia had come personally for the important presentation of Eugenia's engagement to the Danish Prince Rune that had now been broken off. So the Czar would speak to no one but with Prince Rune's father, King Herbert, in urgent conference.

The Czar did not simply declare war when this problem all exploded last week, due only to the fact that his precious first daughter Eugenia still had some small attachment to Prince Rune yet. And that was mainly because her little nasty, unfriendly dog Blysk liked the burnt orange haired Prince so much that it slightly outweighed her outraged indignant fury and the resulting strained diplomatic relations between their two countries.

But the disgruntled ignominy suffered by the Russian Princess at being presented with a flawed gemstone engagement ring still could not be ignored. And Prince Rune must give a properly accountable excuse for the error, where someone must take the blame's liability, if their relationship was ever to continue.

"Oh! It is so lovely to meet you at last, Princess Maria! Please do invite your dear father and your sister to come to dinner." In her lilting, classy English tone, Princess Emma, upon spotting the foreign Russian dressed girl in the midst of the milling around dignitaries and guests just finding their seats at the huge twenty-five foot long dining table of the Banquet Hall, stands to personably welcome the young Russian girl, as the proper head of the household should.

Princess Emma had been playing the role of Egeskov's Lady of the House for many years now. In fact, it was for as long as she and Prince Kaleb had been married, for Queen Louise had died several years before the marriage of her oldest son.

"Oh. nyet, nyet. Not now. I am not supposed to even be down here. But father is napping and Eugenia is walking that little devil dog! So I thought, wouldn't it be nice to see what's going on downstairs. Since they weren't looking… I could peek in on the festivities and no one would ever know, no?" Mischievous Princess Maria with her rich brown pigtails of sausage curls bounces her head up and down in youthful exuberance. Her loose tongue murmurs the inner workings of her energetic inquisitive mind out to the small group of interested princesses encircling around her in the vast Banquet Hall.

"And maybe, I thought, I could say hello to _mon manbynk_ (my boy) if I just _happened_ to meet my _Konfitka_ _(sweetie)_ in the hall." With a waving wink, Princess Maria aims her girlish attentions to a suddenly glimpsed Prince Ruddi. The hapless young man was standing looking lost – as always – beside the serving table that Folmer the Butler had been trying to fill a punch bowl and service food trays behind the 34-year-old awkward blonde Prince with the startling sticky upbeat hair who was making himself a nuisance again.

Moping about in a distracted daze, Ruddi's mouth hangs open in a drooled grin when he too suddenly catches sight of his doe eyed Russian beauty giving him her attention. He waves back, blindly moving forward towards his bright and vivid Maria like a moth to a flame. But this action causes the twelfth in line Prince's body to flail out his too long arms and knock over the punch bowl.

—which causes the pair of serving maids who were rushing about helping get the dinner together while making provisions for the sneaky eyed, dark-haired second butler to carry up the extra dinner trays for the Russian monarch's suite of rooms, to drop their platters. The slipping, skittering maids crash and spill hot gravy and the cook's special pheasant with hollandaise sauce all over the entrance of the Banquet Hall and on one another.

"Whoops." Was all the retreating dummy, currently last in line Prince of the realm is able to offer, rather than an appropriate apology or gentlemanly responsibility that the spoiled young man knew nothing of.

"Oww! My ankle!" The tight bunned auburn-red haired younger of the serving maids named Gwen had the unfortunate accident of slipping on the dropped bowl of sloshing borscht stew from her tray. Gwen had slid across the polished floor until she had turned her ankle in an attempt to catch the midair descent of the Queen's precious gold gilt porcelain salad plate.

"Can you walk?" The older, kind eyed serving maid named Ivy asks with concern etched on her worried features for the other girl, as the two of them balance their lopsided serving trays between them.

"Ohh! It hurts too bad! I don't think so." The young Scottish housemaid whines, the remainder of her tray tumbling to the floor of the palace steps they were nearing.

 _ **CLANGGG!**_

"Oh no!" She had dropped her tray of pheasant when she stumbled, and was now looking down at its wasted form in a forlorn plop on the ground. The young woman named Gwen felt about to cry at her painful lower leg when she limps out further into the unoccupied hall. Ivy puts her tray down to the first step and embraces the disheveled, distraught maid.

"Now you've done it, Gwen! Look at you two! With your twisted bum ankle and your awful hair and apron in a mess, Ivy, neither of you can assist Mr. Folmer serving the formal dinner at the banquet that's just about to begin! We're already short staffed for such a large party! I told everyone we needed to hire more servers! But, no! No one ever listens to me!" Thomas the under-butler begins to grouse in a panic, muttering the injustices of his treatment under his sour breath.

"You just get her downstairs and out of the way, then get yourself changed as quick as you can. I'll take care of this mess. Those Russkies up there won't know their pheasant from their Bolsheviks anyway." Concealing what he was doing behind his dark jacket of his turned back, insalubrious Thomas carelessly scoops up the dropped to the floor disarrayed leg of pheasant with a napkin and dusts off the dust and doggie hair off the prized dish's gravy covered surface.

The sneaky, slicked back, dark-haired man sticks his uppity nose up in the air, carrying the readjusted food plates under the metal top tray as if nothing had occurred.

It may have been a bit messier than originally started out under their picky cook's Mrs. Patmore's exacting hand, but the former footman was too lazy to return back down to the insanely busy kitchen he had just been ordered around in like one of the mere skivvies more than the proper station where he deserved respect as second butler.

"There, none the wiser." The dark and cunning servant declares with a sniveling smile as he clicks his heels together and marches up the staircase with the triple trays balanced precisely in his hands, with not a trace of conscience.

As Thomas passes through the third floor hall and gives a quick rapped knock to the Russian entourage's door, Prince Rune curiously peeks his depressed head out from his exiled bedroom egress, just a ways down the vacant hall. The disgruntled Russian servant of the disgruntled Russian Czar spies the _persona non gratis_ Prince's curious stare down the hall into their suite of rooms. The large manservant silently closes the door with a snobbish glare that reflected his own ruler's disdain of the young man and his kingdom.

The action, coupled with Eugenia's rejection of his longing stares and plaintive apologies for the bejeweled international incident blunder, in which he himself was blameless and took no responsibility for, Rune's withering hopes to speak with Eugenia sink along with his broken heart. The Prince turns back into his exiled room to return to his sulk, far too melancholy to attend dinner with the others downstairs either.

"I have some unfinished business to attend to anyway…" Throwing on his Naval cloak over his shoulders, the disdained pariah culprit, who was at the heart of all this intercontinental strained relations intrigue, Premier Lieutenant Rune Westergaard skulks down the halls of Egeskov. The perturbed young man with the wild mane of spiked rusty orange hair furtively exits the manor down a back secret staircase of the sixteenth century Renaissance Water castle with a dark shadow cast over his features creased in deep consternation.

And just missing one another in the hall, a lithe young figure sneaks back into the Russian visitor's suite, as inquisitive and lively Princess Maria glances around the corridor guiltily…

* * *

 _ **Outside the Castle, on the well groomed front grounds, minutes ago…**_

"… I hope Pascal can find them…I hope she isn't too angry with me …" Rapunzel mumbles as was her habit still, especially when nervous or upset as she turns back from the castle's front door entrance to be greeted by a little furry caramel-orangey colored doggie jumping up on her knelt down to the ground lap and licking her on the lips.

And then there was that same haughty face again.

"It is not Princess-like to be angry with others. I was merely speaking out in worry that my dear little Blysk may have been injured for your clumsiness. But since he appears to have forgiven you, as a good Russian Orthodox Christian, so must I." The young woman in the bright orange dress says with an affected air. "Let us begin again. My name is Princess Eugenia of Russia. How do you do?" The thick Russian accented Princess Royal in her vivid orange dress, replete with so much jewelry it was…well… _gaudy_ … extends down to Rapunzel a conciliatory handshake of offered pleasantries.

Rapunzel blinks up against a similarly burnt orange setting sun at this young woman who had taken the Coronian Princess' words spoken aloud to have meant her and their none too pleasant encounter minutes ago inside Egeskov Castle's front ingress.

The snobbish nineteen-year-old girl's easily bruised feelings and keen eyes seemed to be assessing every line of Rapunzel's bewildered smiling face that had been watching Pascal dash away with a bit lowered lip.

"Oh! Yes. That sounds lovely. She's such a nice little doggie, isn't she? Now that we get to know each other, you little furry cutie pie! Um… I'm Rapunzel! Princess Rapunzel of Corona." Our cocoa brown haired princess answers genuinely with a smile as she ruffles the Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka's panting head. Then Rapunzel stands up straight to shake Eugenia's proffered hand as she lifts up and passes the small pooch over to the other Princess.

"Blysk is a _**he**_ , not a she, for your information. I am aware that the long, luxurious fur coat makes certain vital, gender-obvious evidence difficult to see." The direct and to the point Crown Princess of Russia responds in her blunt manner as she corrects her equal rank, yet several years her senior, foreign counterpart with as much respect as she could muster.

"Guess I missed that little detail. My Eugene certainly would tease me about it, if he were here." Rapunzel chuckles. She justified her mistake to the effeminately tied bow in the front hair of the male dog as she looks down at it with a twisted lip smile at the thought of her mate's response.

"Argh. This baby of mine sure is a kicker." The young mother-to-be cradles her churning stomach where a lot of nonstop action seemed to be taking place, despite her best attempts to remain calm.

"Your husband's name is Prince Eugene? Perhaps he and I would 'hit it off' – as you Westerners say – since we both have the same proud Royal root name that means 'richness'. I would wager that your Eugene must have a high regard for fine gold and precious jewels as I do." Eugenia admires her multiple genuine gemstone rings and bracelets a-glimmer in the brilliant last rays of the sunsetting sky she hold them up to.

The pair of young women find themselves immersed in the sunset as they walk back to the castle side-by-side, now in peace with one another.

As Eugenia gives admiration to her sparkling ornaments aglow in the burnt-orange sunset, her perceptive eyes catch a glimpse of another flaming orangey-red view. Through the parted curtain of a certain royal bedroom's window above, a spiky head's silhouette could just be made out, a hopeful look of wistful yearning on Prince Rune's ruddy features as he gazed down at his miffed fiancée longingly, his green eyes reaching out to be forgiven.

Fuzzy ginger dog Blysk excitedly begins to bark upwards, eager to play with his favorite new friend again, his swishing furry tail a-wagging.

"Hmph." But the prideful Russian Crown Princess merely turns her high and mighty nose up with a miffed huff at her **_ex_** -fiancé. Eugenia then grabs hold of Rapunzel's surprised arm to quicken their pace back into the castle and away from any unwanted prying eyes.

Unaware of the silent melodrama, Rapunzel smiles a crooked incredulous smirk as she kicks around in her head Princess Eugenia's quite interesting ironic analogy of the same hobby of jewel hunting that the Royal Princess and Rapunzel's own discarded prince shared in their irresistible lure for things bright and shiny and brilliant that gleamed in the sunset's parting golden rays.

"Hee hee hee. That's a funny thing." Rapunzel giggles at the comical comparison of Eugene's affinity for stealing jewels and all objects of gold or silver intrinsic value. The unborn babe in her womb appeared to find that amusing as well, with a hard shove.

"Whoo! This girl of mine in here certainly has a pair of powerful legs and strong arms." Rapunzel twitters, sucking in air as she must stumble into the whisked open doors of Egeskov on Princess Eugenia's supportive shoulder.

Rapunzel quickly removes her sheepish arm at the cool stare the snobbish teenage Princess gives her too familiar proximity touch.

"Why are my words so amusing?" The easily slighted, spoiled rotten, tall and elegant Russian Crown Princess testily demands of Rapunzel with a sudden angered pair of flared green eyes down at the diminutive cocoa haired girl.

"No reason." Rapunzel answers, embarrassed, with a deep pinkish color rising to her heated chastened cheek.

"Yes, first mothers in your predicament have a certain frivolous humor about them, in my vast experience. I have an Aunt who had borne eight children and two cousins who have already delivered four and seven babies, respectively. Each of those mothers had acted in the times of their pregnancies with excessive inscrutable silliness. Indeed, they were ludicrous at times." Princess Eugenia explains to a wide-eyed Rapunzel of the maternal tendency to behave foolishly that she, at the very experienced age of nineteen, was expert at.

But Eugenia truthfully had witnessed in her observant young life many births of her kin, almost innumerable to count, and the intelligent Crown Princess knew she would have to become well-versed in the subject, with her own need to produce a suitable heir for her kingdom.

"And you will be even more whimsical, considering." She said enigmatically as she walks Rapunzel towards the Banquet Room door.

"Considering?" Rapunzel queries in wonder of where detached and cold Princess Eugenia was going with this giving her some insightful conversation.

"Considering, that it is apt for new mothers to have the tendency for especially irrational foolishness when they are about to bear twins. Have a pleasant dinner, dear Princess Rapunzel. Good night." With her prophetic words, a nose up in the air Eugenia and her just as smug looking doggie turns on her heel to return upstairs, leaving Rapunzel with her bewildered mouth open in jaw dropped wonder.

"Twins?" A quirky smirk crosses the Prussian Princess's face with the new and exciting thought of the long dreamt of big family that she always wanted for herself, now could be doubled all due to her wonderful and amazing Eugene and the love he has showered upon her once empty life.

* * *

 _Meanwhile, in populated Egeskov…_

After sitting a few minutes with friendly little boy Lukas as he described life in the Fattigskole orphanage and the kindly holy Sisters there, Elsa soon was aware of how much the lonely boy missed his mother, her new friend Daphne.

Though Lukas never dropped a single complaint of the Lutheran convent nuns and the friends he had made there at the charity mission school, the quiet self-imposed Queen of Arendelle could distinctly connect with the solitude in his young heart that yearned to belong to someone and share a real home with them.

"You must be hungry by now, Lukas. It's dinner time and you've only eaten half a cookie." Elsa states as she finishes readjusting her white lacy maid's cap after fixing her askew hair.

"I'm okay, Miss Elsie. I can wait here for Mama forever. I know she's close by." Lukas says, dreamily content as he wakes up from the catnap he had taken after keeping cool while chatting with Elsa or being quietly satisfied playing with the ice sculpture figures that the young blonde Queen had created for her new charge to keep him occupied as he was having fun exploring this unused part of the loft, climbing about in the secret attic room Elsa had discovered earlier, the one that led up to Hans' boyhood lair.

Elsa thought this attic loft storage room a good place to keep the child amused while she poked about in the discarded furniture for clues on Hans' current whereabouts before she began primping at her mussed hair glimpsed in the crooked, cracked mirror.

"Well, your Mama asked me to watch you while she was busy. You're a growing boy and you need to eat dinner properly, since I have to go down to check outside on my other friend that I was telling you about anyway. Marshmallow may be frightened out there without me checking on him for so long." Elsa reverts to her _Snow Beast'_ s original moniker to make her thirty foot tall, at times vicious ice monster more kid friendly. "So, we might as well go down together and get a bite to eat in the kitchen on the way. The cook there, Mrs. Patmore, is very sweet. I think she's rather fond of me for putting out a stove fire for her earlier when I first arrived. I don't think she would mind too much if we joined the other servants for dinner after we visit with Marshmallow." Elsa stands to her full five foot six height from the broken mirror that she had been knelt down to in rearranging her hair.

"Okay, Miss Elsie. Golly, you sure are pretty." Lukas looked up from his playing with his ice cube action figures to glimpse Elsa with her long platinum blonde braid done up quite fetchingly, wound around her head in a loose chignon bun.

"Why, thank you, kind Sir." Elsa curtsies with a blushing smile under the charming boy's admiring gaze as she finishes combing back her silky blonde locks in the reflection of the broken mirror, then carefully arranges her frilly maid cap atop it.

"Let's go." Taking Lukas' hand, she leads him down the hall that she'd become quite familiar with, to collect the bag full of fresh made snow lefse 'pancakes' she'd made for her faithful bodyguard, Marshmallow, in the attic servant's quarter bedroom she shared with Daphne.

"You have nice cool hands, Lukas. But you must wash your hands properly before you eat." Elsa smiles, glancing down to find that one of the icy statuettes that she had crafted for the boy to play with before was still clutched in one of his pudgy digits.

"Oh. I must've brought this guy with me. He's my favorite." The bright cerulean blue eyes of the boy light up guiltily as he hands over the last figure that he had not left behind in their 'fortress' he built with drawers and empty boxes in the other room. Lukas splashes on his face the deliciously cool water in the attic wash basin at the bedside.

Elsa looks down with another type of smile to see that Lukas' favorite ice cube sculpture was the little boy version of Hans that she had created as playmate of little girl Elsa and Anna ice figures. The lonesome figure was looking back up at Elsa with his sad crying eyes as he begins to melt in her hand. "Oh no you don't. You're not getting away from me that easily." Elsa whispers symbolically, with a mere flick of her wrist conjuring up a new suit of ice armor for a now magically matured into adult Hans Westergaard figure.

And the lone icy figure, as Elsa and Lukas leave the attic loft bedroom, was now wearing a formal attire of a Norwegian Admiral, all arrayed in his silvery naval clothes, standing in the midst of cool smoke billowing all around him on an Icy Palace mountain.

* * *

Anna loved to play with dolls for as far back as she could remember. It wasn't just about dressing and undressing or putting on their shoes and little purses and scarves and hats in mix-and-match new styles. It wasn't even about brushing their silky hair, braiding and re-braiding, moving their dolly arms and dolly legs to swing around and hang off dolly walls and stand on dolly furniture or ride dolly horses that was important.

No, it was the thrill of her pure childlike heart to receive on her eighth birthday, from Mama and Papa, her most favorite pair of dolls to replace her trashed beloved plush versions.

One doll that looked just like her and one that looked just like Elsa.

Anna remembered now how she would dream up new scenarios for her inseparable pair of dolls. She would pretend that they were really alive and it really was Elsa and they could talk to one another, play with one another, swap clothes with one another or sit and chat for hours lying on the dolly couch and bed having a fun sleepover. Little lonely Princess Anna generally made the inanimate objects be forever friends with each other as she always wished for, but never had in her own real-life growing up.

All her fantasy doll world that young Princess Anna thrived on through her childhood came rushing back to the ginger haired married woman of twenty-one in a flash of past memory.

Anna played so hard with that inseparable doll duo that they had gotten so beat up, their hair was brushed out until frizzy, their arms cracked off, their legs missing, even their little porcelain necks shattered under little carrot top hoyden's enthusiastic playfulness.

Yes, wild Anna was rough when she let her poor dolls swing from trees, do Olympics style pole bolting and diving into the fjord until she tearfully nearly lost them both, had Papa not been such an accomplished swimmer in rescue of the drowning dollies.

And though that pair of sister dolls may not have been able to be counted as mint-in-box ever again, at least, in her mind's reverie, sprightly Anna made them live.

But the day finally came when she had to put her irreplaceable dolls away, for they had become so fragile and cracked and dilapidated. And, all at once, young Anna realized that a doll version of Elsa, with all of her pretty platinum blonde hair, sparkling exotic blue eyes and smiling lovely face, even if she was all brand-new again, wearing that Scandinavian pattern little blue nightie that Mama had sewed for her by hand to the letter detail and that had been long lost in the trees out the window she would climb — that treasured doll could never replace the actual companionship of her best friend and playmate of a sister.

But those lonely days were behind them now, and Anna had found her big sister Elsa as real and loving as her dreams longed for her to be, for they did everything together now, truly.

"Isn't it nice when sisters are the best of friends?" Coming out of her nostalgia with a smile, Anna announces aloud proudly to the group of little children all around her.

Anna and Kristoff had been brought inside the equestrian building that was a unique blend of a refined Renaissance water castle and a Medieval fortress castle. The grumpy old gardener named Carl had kept them under surveillance for the past few hours since that pointy bearded Prince instructed him to bring the pair of alleged 'party entertainers' to the Ladegården stable complex to 'practice' under the groundsman's watchful eye.

But Anna was the kind to make the most out of every situation. After all, how bad could it be to babysit a few of the Royal Princesses while she and Kristoff were waiting for Rapunzel? Maybe Anna could even wrangle some info about their Uncle Hans out of them, if she played her kiddy cards right.

"My sister is not my best friend." One sourpuss rebellious seven-year-old announces with a dour expression on her face when the orange braided Princess, her face washed and cleaned, had attempted to patch up a row that had ensued between the toffee haired child and her six-year-old younger sibling. Anna's doll reverie stemmed from this fight over who got to play with the prettiest doll at the singular dollhouse in the stable nursery that she and Kristoff had been plopped in the middle of.

"How can you say that, Matilda? Sisters were designed by the angels in Heaven to be eternal best friends since the moment they were born! _**My**_ sister is my best buddy, my confidante, my conscience, my constant companion to laugh with, sing with, play with – the one who will in the end always be there to hold my hand when I'm down, read to me when I'm sick in bed, share secrets with when we want to talk about boys. If I ever feel sad, she's there to hug me and when I'm happy, she's there with a smile. You girls should cherish that special bond God blessed you with in the precious gift of a sister." Anna smiles with the wisdom of her loving heart with Elsa in the forefront of her mind. "I know I thank Jesus for her, every day!"

"Look at how well our back up singer trio, Lucina, Selena and Carina, are getting along! You and Margaret should try to play together nicely. Sisterhood is strongest magic after all! Right, Kristly?" Anna says, turning from her soliloquy to her husband nearby, after meeting with all twenty-two young girls of all ages, personalities and sizes, ranging from Petunia, the youngest of Prince Franz and Princess Amalia at two years old, to Elinor, the eldest daughter of Prince Kaleb and Princess Emma. The perky Arendellian Princess, keeping up her undercover farce, had introduced herself and her new husband as the court entertainers for the girls' grandfather's birthday party tomorrow.

Anna couldn't help but put in her two cents to sort out the tiff roiled up between the girls after making new friends with several of the more congenial children who liked to sing. Anna was a natural people person and a kid at heart so it was easy for the outgoing girl to connect with the female children.

"Don't get me involved here. I have enough problems of my own." Kristoff states under his breath with a standoffish scoff at this quite unsavory, slightly dishonest task that his little woman had brainstormed the newlyweds into.

Kristoff grew up as an outcast to regular human society all his young life. That involved pretty much him only cohabitating with troll kids, who weren't exactly a-typical. So that made it hard for him to relate to normal, sensitive human children like those in Arendelle.

And now, facing this gaggle of giggling, gurgling, goo-goo eyed girly gals certainly was not his cup of akvavit.

The big muscled blond Ice Harvester was having a rough time staving off all of the pubescent female cousins that had gathered around him, staring up at him as if he were a circus spectacle.

Especially that second eldest, sixteen-year-old teenager Princess Marianne, with her batting eyelids and obvious flirtations. The minute she saw Kristoff - _after a dramatic faint_ \- Marianne decided to sit at the edge of the stage right beneath where the 'performer' had set up a 'practice' corner in the nearby bleachers of the Ladegården stables stadium section, mostly for the prying eyed gardener's sake .

There, under Carl the groundskeeper's watchful gaze, Kristoff had feigned, with Anna's assistant direction, his lute practicing jam session that was of 'vital import' for the birthday party to go off well tomorrow.

The swooning teenyboppers soon surrounded the gorgeous young heartthrob with a mellow voice, golden throated singer with matching buttery hair. Kristoff's raw masculinity and stunning physique had the impressionable, sheltered young girls greedily drinking in their first glimpse of what a real specimen of a Norske man looked like.

But for modest Kristoff, it was all too much.

"Hey!" Thrown into this unwillingly, teen idol Kristoff Bjorgman has to interrupt his lute playing after being girl-handled by his admiring fans who were very curious to touch his bare arm to check the firmness of his rippling muscles to see if they were as rock hard as they looked on the rugged mountainman while he was strumming his guitar in practice.

"Okay. Sing-along time!" Anna abruptly announces when one of the bolder young princesses takes her cousin's dare to reach up and fluff Kristoff's golden mane of hair, soon followed by their explosive twitter of giggles.

With a possessive twisted lip expression, Anna, holding baby two-year-old Petunia under her arm, leaps onto the stage in the row of bleachers, until she was literally hanging on her guy's much desired, musclebound arm.

 _"Hark the Herald Angels sing! Glory to the newborn King! Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconcile!"_ Anna spontaneously begins to bellow out her boisterous favorite Christmas hymn that classical great Felix Mendelssohn had composed for the great religious leader Charles Wesley's soaring lyrics of joy and praise to the newborn Christ-child.

Anna sings the happy, triumphant Christmas carol, that she kept in her pure heart all year long in such perfect note, so audibly loud in the perfect key and tune that all those fluttering eyed girls' attention is suddenly wrenched away from mauling poor Kristoff.

"Sing-along now, girls! I know you all know it! We're going to sing my favorite Christmas song for your Gramps tomorrow as an extra special birthday present, like a heavenly choir! I bet he'll like that! Right, Petunia?" Effervescent Anna throws herself into the role of lead singer/ace babysitter getting all of the previously bored or disinterested children involved in this good vibes, family sing-along venture as animated, she swings her arms and legs about enthusiastically in dancing rhythm.

Her musician Kristoff's good-natured eyes laugh out of his discomfited state in her undeniable sparkle that the mountainman can't help but smile up at his boisterous wife as he begins to supply the harmony of the holiday favorite 'Hark the Herald' for Anna's soprano melody.

Anna's engaging song, put across with her inviting lovely voice and infectious smile, causes the daughters of this dysfunctional Royal family, from the smallest in Anna's arms, who knew only a few of the timeless lyrics, but liked the way Anna danced and tickled her tiny giggling tummy in rhythm with her joyful song; to the oldest who remembered church choir on Christmas mornings many years ago with her sister holding hands, as they were again now, once all the formerly argumentative children begin to sing the well known holiday tune in harmony together.

 _"Joyful now ye nations rise! Join the triumph of the skies! With angelic host proclaim: 'Christ is born in_ _Bethlehem_ _!"_

Kristoff looks on proudly upon his new wife and best friend who could always turn a frown into a smile.

{ _You're going to be a great mom when it's your turn, aren't you, Feistypants?}_

Whether, in her energetic rendition of the belted out hymn Anna was sharing with these children, she could pick up Kristoff's train of thought or not, the once lonely boy emotes unashamedly to his sweet girl, who answers only in a bright smiling, ruddy-cheeked blush back at him, with a heart full of love.

 _"Hark the Herald Angels sing! Glory to the newborn King!"_

Even tough as nails, jaded old gardener Carl can't help but murmur a mumbled line or two of the Christmas carol, remembered from his own Sunday school era, way back when. The youthful all-girl plus Kristoff choir sings the moving hymn under Anna's inspirational lead and winning smile.

Then the vivacious young woman, caught up in the songful excitement, starts to next belt out the birthday song and lead the girls of all ages in a merry dance around the stable arena bleachers. And on this hot August day the children, all with the surname Westergaard, were blossoming their Christmas joy in any season under the light of the radiant star named Anna of Arendelle.

 _"Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear King Herbert. Happy birthday to you!"_

* * *

When Elsa and Lukas arrived in Mrs. Patmore's kitchen, the world within was an upside down cake of pure chaos.

With a full banquet dinner just minutes away from being served, the usual mad dash to keep food fresh and hot and steaming, while it's all carried out on dumbwaiters or by quick servants streaming in line after line into the massive Banquet Hall, was at its normal breakneck speed.

But this planned, smooth dinner was turned on its ear by one of the serving maids suffering from a sprained ankle after the nasty spill earlier when helping the second Butler bring the dinner trays upstairs to the self-deposed Russian visitors who were refusing to leave their suites in protest.

Mrs. Patmore, the downstairs cook of Egeskov, was beyond flustered on how to get her all-day-slaved over culinary creations up to the elaborate dinner table for the Egeskov banquet feast, now that properly dressed and ready for service Ivy had her ankle twisted and Gwen was going to be late, changing from that sticky mess she made of her maid frock and apron.

The cook was pulling her increasingly gray hair out at the foul luck of being understaffed already for such a large dinner party, until a white angel of pure beauty enters her kitchen on a cool breeze.

"Elsie! Darling! You are a godsend! With those annoying Russians up there taking Thomas' attentions, serving them special delivered dishes of special made foods, and Ivy with a twisted ankle unable to serve and all, Gwen not fully changed yet, can I ask you to be a dear and take up the slack for Thomas a little bit—at least pouring out the white wine upstairs? That lazy boy still hasn't returned from waiting hand and foot on those sulking Russkies! Everyone fit to serve is already otherwise engaged on presenting the other courses. Since you're dressed just right in your pretty maid outfit neatly pressed to a tee, after all! And I'm sure, with all of your impressive resume credential and royal service to the Queen of Norway for so many years as Daphne tells me, you can fill in for Ivy later, as well, with the salad and pastries, can't you, love? I tell you, I'm at my wit's end if you can't help us out here!" Mrs. Patmore's plaintive gaze up at Elsa was so full of hopeful desperation that the kindhearted Arendelle girl couldn't flat out refuse the older woman.

"But – I'm not really qualified enough to–" Elsa begins to lightly protest, gazing down at her domestic get-up with skeptical eyes.

"Your perfectly suitable, Elsie, dear! Here's your tray! Be sure that the salads are offered before the soups, but after the wine. And don't forget to serve Princess Emma first, as per etiquette around here, at the foot of the table first. But then move on fluidly to each of the guests, starting from left to right. Just keep your eyes down, don't engage in conversation with anyone, and don't bump into their shoulders! Our raucous princely boys do tend to swing their arms about in the air when telling a tale of their hunting exploits in Africa or the Far East or Timbuktu or Lord knows where they go traipsing around the world. And don't forget not to make eye contact. Thank God, King Herbert won't be eating in the Hall to see this chaos!" The plump older woman plops down to a rocking chair at the side of the stove reserved for the head cook when she was overwhelmed by the amount of work that came with putting the service to the test of those downstairs.

"Listen. There's just enough salad for one serving each. But you're so pretty that I am sure some of the men will probably ask for seconds just to catch your eye on them. Especially Master Didrik…" Mrs. Patmore had been with the family for a very long time, and knew her 'boys' inside and out by now. The savvy old cook had been at the house of Egeskov for far too many years not to pick up the salacious rumors of that particular Prince's amorous behavior towards many other servant maids. Too many had told tales about that certain sixth in line roving eyed Prince and his philandering roguish tendencies with the opposite sex of any class, low or high collar or any gal in between who wore a skirt well, possessed a shapely figure, or had a pleasing countenance.

And this tall, slender, platinum blonde who, despite her servile working girl status, had all three tenets rolled into one lovely, delicate package. Plus, a certain air of sophisticated deportment and breeding about her posture and bearing that befitted more of a Royal Queen…

"Just keep those exquisite eyes down, and your pretty mouth closed with a deadpan expression on your face as you serve." The elderly lady makes a puckered lipped, drawn nose face to give Elsa an example of what she called 'deadpan'.

"If you do that, no one will ever notice you in there, as a servant should be. All right, my girl, off you go." Mrs. Patmore says with a soft smile as she stacked more and more food options on the tray that she personally loads a tongue-tied Elsie the maid down with. The tray was holding a huge salad bowl full of chopped up greens of every summer variety and tomatoes and onions and carrots and three rows high of fresh baked dinner rolls, French breads and croissants in baskets alongside.

"But –" Elsa gazes down in speechless mortified shock of her arms weighed down, holding onto a big wide tray full of salads and fresh baked goods that she had just been commandeered to carry up in service to the banquet dinner table.

"Wow. Those rolls are sure good, Mrs. Patmore! I bet those folks up there will like them lots! Especially being delivered by someone so nice and pretty as Miss Elsie, who even helped bring in the fresh cream for the butter, Mama said." Lukas, from where he was seated at the servant's cutting table workstation, chomps down on a roll lathered with fresh butter that Daisy, the scullery maid, had snuck in for him from the larder.

"Lukas. It looks like I may be a while serving this upstairs, and my friend must be hungry out there by now. Can I trust you to go behind the chapel and give him what's in this basket I've made for him? Marshmallow can be a bit frightening at first, but he's a softy deep down when it comes to good little children. So I'm sure he'll warm up to you in no time." Elsa smiles, returning the compliment, as the flustered, inundated Queen could already sense her snow pancakes melting in the basket in this hot kitchen.

"Tell him that _'Elsa is safe and wants you to keep lying low_.' Can I impose on you to do that for me?" Elsa, balancing a large service tray, whispers low in Lukas' ear for only him to overhear.

"Sure, I will! Wow! I get to meet the real Mr. Marshmallow?" Lucas was exciting at the thrilling idea of going face-to-face with the huge thirty foot tall snow beast hiding somewhere on Egeskov's grounds, whom Elsa had described as her protective friend. Lukas already knew what Marshmallow looked like because Elsa had ice magically sculpted a small in-scale figurine of the friendly snow monster for the boy to play with earlier, with the others.

The trustworthy, plump boy eagerly jumps off his wooden chair and grabs a carrot from the table to chew on as he takes the basket Elsa had placed by the door before dashing out the rear exit with pure enthusiastic joy in his bright blue eyed features.

"Be nice, Marshmallow. He's a good boy." Elsa sends a frozen mental plea out to her large snow creation before focusing back at her current task at hand. "Okay. Here we go." Elsa takes a deep breath before setting out with her heavy tray, as she follows many of the other servants in their procession, each with their own tray full of food for fine dining and bottled wines to be poured.

Not that versed in doing the hard work herself, Queen Elsa of Arendelle steps in line with her heavy tray into the castle's Banquet Hall that was already replete with royal guests and dignitaries.

As the banquet starts to get underway, Elsa steps in, her eyes dazzled by the opulent array of Egeskov's Royal Banquet Hall's vast twenty-six leaf table that had seen, over the centuries of royal celebrations, weddings and coronations, many visitors more than this set of over fifty guests invited to the King's birthday gala.

The upper crust of Danish society certainly knew how to set a table for a fine dining experience. This Grand Dinner service, consisting of golden platters, matching centerpieces and candelabras, which even had special gold serving utensils and over 8000 gold gilt salad plates, had been Queen Louise's pride and joy. There were placed at the table six glasses each from the set of coronation crystal - glasses for red wine, glasses for white wine, champagne toasting glasses, water goblets, and two small glasses for dessert champagne and port positioned beside each placemat. Linen napkins had been painstakingly put at each place setting, neatly folded as to reveal the embroidered royal crest of this Danish kingdom – a golden ship's anchor intertwined in a snakelike rope, symbolizing dominion over the sea – that was the proud crest of the Navy-centric estate.

As backdrop to the stunningly set table and gold edged tablecloth was the glorious, stirring scene of brave Danish ancestor and hero, Christian IV riding astride his noble steed into righteous battle. The full length, entire wall portrait at the front of the hall, must have been meant to stir one's appetite in this conquering nation.

When she catches her breath, from looking around at all of Hans' posh, ornate Castle's majestic splendor, Elsa did not dare to even scan the chattering guests in the audience, because the Queen of Norway had a feeling that she knew one or two of the ambassadors assembled there. Elsa shakes herself, quickly putting her head down and keeping her eyes averted with her best interpretation of Mrs. Patmore's 'deadpan' expression.

So, with her pretty mouth in a pucker and her cute little nose drawn Elsa aims her luminous eyes diverted downward, as much as she could, and still see where she was going. Elsie the service maid, arrived just in time to fall into step with Folmer the Butler beginning to pour the red wine just now. Quickly she places the solid silver tray of salad straight down on the serving table. Elsa easily distinguishes the white wine bottle from the rest there and she begins to trace the slow and unsteady Butler's lead in filling first, Princess Emma's glass, as she was the Hostess. Then the old butler shakily pours the rest of the guests' red wine glasses with the fruit of the vine, unless otherwise stated.

Like a sleek mink, never meeting Lady of the House Princess Emma's inquisitive eyes, realizing she'd be well-informed of the daily workings of the household, Elsa silently sneaks in and out to pour her white vintage behind seated royals, dignitaries and visitors who were all too busy in their own pleasant passing chatter or intense political discussions with one another to notice the servants wordlessly pouring out their drinks before the meal started.

After wide-eyed Elsa had taken in how dashing and debonair many of the Westergaard Princes, that she identified as Hans' older brothers, Elsa tries to listen in on each conversation as she continues to pour down the long line of the banquet table. That is, until she is startled to recognize more than a few friendly—and unfriendly—faces, that she fears would notice her, even in her maid's disguise.

Especially those who attended her own Coronation: Ambassadors Carreras, DuPont, Polaski, Spumoni… and the Duke of Weselton…

"It's rather warm in here, isn't it?" The Duke wipes his sweaty brow under this crowd of almost fifty human bodies all talking and chatting and generating heat.

"No wine for me, my dear. Hypertension, you know? Oh dear. Actually, can I bother you to fetch me some cool water to take my pill with?" The Duke of Weselton opens in his uppity aristocratic accent, and lightly touches Elsa's forearm as he courteously requests a refill of the water that the thirsty little man had already imbibed in place of the alcohol beverage his wife seated beside him would not allow one drop of.

"Right away… Sir…" Though her once strained relationship with the Duke of Weselton for a time, had now improved upon a conciliatory second encounter where forgiveness was given and gratefully received, Elsa did not wish for the Duke to, unaware, blow her cover. So she once again modulates her high-pitched voice to a lower tone, keeping her head down.

Elsa quickly moves back to the service table sidebar and reaches for the pitcher of water that had been sitting there all afternoon in preparation for this banquet. Placing her hand against the crystal decanter's base, Elsa senses that the water was warmer than room temperature on this early August day rather than the cool glass of water the poor overheated man ordered.

So, why not chill it along with the entire room full of uncomfortably rigged out in heavy formal clothing, hot and unhappy, secretly sweaty people?

 _It's the least I can do for my royal neighbors..._

And without a second thought, Elsa's innate power transfers from her fingertips into the glass pitcher with just enough of ice magic not to shatter the priceless crystal.

Next, her blue eyes covertly turn a shade pallid to an icy hue as the Ice Queen subtly infuses the particles of air in the hot stagnant room with a low barometer frosting to gradually draw down the stifling still temperatures for the Banquet Hall's ignorant guests.

"Here you are, sir. Cool water." Elsa, pleased with her cold control that was so carefully eased into that none of the fifty guests, nor Butler Folmer, nor the other maid servants, noticed the temperature shift.

The dangerous adventure she went on in the north of her country had benefited Elsa's abilities in ways that she didn't even know possible. And Prince Hans had always been the one to encourage her, challenge her, make her trust in herself, all along the way. Elsa missed his secure support more than she could say or had even realized, up until now.

 _Where are you now, my Vise Admiral? I miss you…in so many ways…_

Elsa's mind wanders a little as she leans over the Duke of Weselton's shoulder to pour out the chilled water from her ice infused pitcher into his empty glass.

"My! That water is indeed cool! I must congratulate your ice house's longevity, even in this incredibly warm season of summer this year, Prince Lars. You must share with us all of your great country's highly developed cool engineering secrets." Weselton, his spectacles clouding up to make his grateful gaze upon Elsa blurred, compliments to the Royal Prince of Denmark sitting nearest to himself, directly across the table.

"Our ' _ice house longevity'_ …? It is quite inexplicable to produce such cool water in this relentless summer heat sufficient enough to call the pitcher to humidify and therefore produce condensation of that quick order. This requires further investigation…" The brainiac resident genius of the Westergaard brothers puts his egghead cap on at the most interesting topic amid all the mundane boring diversions of this promising to be rather humdrum evening.

"Please hand over that remarkable crystal pitcher to me…? Forgive me, I don't believe I ever caught your name, Miss…?" Prince Lars, his trusty magnifying piece already withdrawn from his overstuffed pocket full of useful eclectic gadgets in his scatterbrained collection.

"I… may still need it for the other guests…" Elsa freezes (figuratively speaking) as her averted eyes dart around at this unwanted attention that her little polar stunt had just caused. Many eyes begin to turn to the scene of the maid peculiarly hugging the ice cold pitcher to her heaving chest, unwilling to pass it over to the standing Prince, demandingly reaching for it.

"Nonsense! Everyone's water goblet is still full. I wish to take this to my lab and examine it immediately." Lars, as a consummate researcher, indeed was a stubborn wannabe scientist, as his wife, Princess Isabelle overhears his ardor over her pleasant conversation with sister-in-law Elizabeth and the Duke of Weselton's wife.

"Lars! This is a formal dinner, not one of your science experiments. Please leave that poor girl to her duty." The embarrassed Princess of Italy shakes her blonde sausage curls at the unkempt curiosity of her too intelligent mate that often left him much too inquiring for his own good.

Lars, deflated as the messy flat hair on his head he was running his hands through, sighs and his intrigued shoulders slump as he relents.

Elsa gratefully nods, and she hurriedly refills the Duke's glass one more time before skedaddling over to the next guest in need of white wine. The Butler, Folmer, gives her his evil dagger stare for both disrupting the banquet by speaking – dare I say _argue_ with an honored guest **and** for being tardy in not keeping up with the elderly gentleman's fast-paced snail's crawl.

"I'll have some of that highly sought after cool water from your beautiful flowing spring, Elsie."

 _Oh no._ ** _That_** _voice._

Elsa, after serving several more guests with the white wine down the line of the long table, is startled to hear a deep syrupy male voice, come out of nowhere to be directed up at her, nom de plume and all.

Prince Didrik cranes his neck upwards and back at an awkward angle to be able to look Elsa right in the eye where she was near his side, directly behind the devilishly handsome man.

"Yes, Sir." Elsa bashfully nods, swallowing back hard. Unsettled by his flirtatious tone, she reaches her hand out over his shoulder to fill his only partly empty goblet.

Abruptly, Didrik's long fingers lace around Elsa's extended arm at her inner elbow in such a grip that she could not pull away without spilling the water in the pitcher.

"Wait." His breathy voice almost hisses in her ear with the tension rising between their two rather intimately close bodies. With his left hand, Didrik claims the goblet and luxuriously downs, gulp by expressive gulp, right in her hearing, the entire contents of his cup, his moistened lips smacking close to Elsa's blushing ear.

"Yes, _now_ I'm ready for _your chilled oasis_ overflow." The silver tongued ladies man of a Prince words his sultry phrases in such a seductive fashion, that the frozen in place, unable to breathe innocent maiden in Elsa can't help but feel… overwhelmed… and somehow repulsed…and violated at the same moment. She, in a panic, felt the ice start to flow in her veins from his unwanted touch, and she knew she wouldn't be able to stop the sensation about to burst forth.

"Maid! What is taking you so long?! I require some white wine, _pronto_." Snapping her fingers for effect, the angry Spanish accented voice of Princess Antoinetta, Didrik's wife, interrupts his publicly blatant tempting seduction of this lowly servant from where she was sitting across from her unreliable, insatiable man.

Elsa, gratefully interrupted by the angry voice, immediately pulls herself together and jumps out of the lothario's grasp, catching herself before it was too late, and manages to only spill several drops of the ice water's liquid on the table, instead of what could've been far worse. She haughtily pulls her arm from Prince Didrik's unwilling release of her stiff unbent elbow and swiftly extricates herself, moving purposefully far to the other side to his wife. A still shaken Elsa, closes her eyes tightly, takes a deep breath to steady her nerves, in an attempt to calm herself down.

 _Conceal it, don't feel it. Don't let it show._

In that moment, she finally remembers her Papa's words clearly, truly, as he had said exactly, and not what she had falsely transformed the phrase into for most of her life. He had told her to conceal **IT** —the ice; to not feel **IT** —the ice.

Only the ice!

He had never meant for her to conceal and hide her feelings nor herself away! Papa had said for her only to try to conceal her _power_ , to not feel the ice, so she could learn to control it through discipline and training! She widened her eyes at the sudden realization of her long misunderstanding of his words all these years. How could she have been so foolish? How could she not have remembered his every word?

But no longer. She now understood everything precisely and meant to put into practice her Papa's advice and…she had to admit to herself, live up to Hans' belief in her abilities.

She moves determinedly to pour the contents of her white wine flagon into Princess Antoinetta's wine glass, without making a mess all over the table—with either wine or ice—and succeeds with a small inward smile of thanks to the two beloved men in her life.

"Thank you. You may go." Spoken in a clipped voice full of seething anger, the fiery tempered Spanish woman shoots dagger eyes at her mate as she waves a relieved Elsa off dismissively without a glance.

"Now keep your appetite in check the rest of the evening, my Didrik. Or I may have to see that that _innocent_ young woman is relieved from her position here in Egeskov." Antoinetta knew far too well that her mate's reckless wandering eyes were too aroused to just give up so easily on that attractive platinum bombshell for the rest of their visit.

"On what grounds would you do such a cruel thing, my dearest? She seems to be accomplishing her job rather well." Tall, dark and handsome Prince Didrik says offhandedly as he twirls his dark handlebar moustache with his right hand fingers that still felt a suspicious tinge of an icy sensation impressed on him from that beautiful pure maiden's lovely arm, felt even through her black dress sleeve.

"Disturbing the peace." She states distinctly in an angry fashion, finishing her entire glass of red wine and pushing away the white wine Elsie the maid had poured symbolically away from her place setting with disdain.

"I wonder…" But Prince Didrik was more than just normally interested now in this new quarry of a pretty young girl waltzing on a mist of ice before his wolfish eyes. The Prince was so intrigued that his sights cannot help but follow Elsa's every move around the Banquet Hall, in spite of his wife's indignant glares.

Elsa makes as much distance between herself and Hans' lecherous older brother, without looking back, her eyes remaining trained down. In her flustered state, the young Queen finishes by rote pouring the wine glasses out without even pausing to ask if the rest of the guests wished for some or not.

Wanting to get in and out of the Banquet Hall as quickly as possible, Elsa turns on her heel and carries the salad tray she brought up for Mrs. Patmore back to the table, purposely starting after where the sixth in line Prince was seated near the middle of the elongated banquet.

"Salad?" Already halfway around the room, Elsa must ask now in her deepened voice again, as she finds that too many visitors, Princes and Princesses and royal dignitaries alike all preferred to pass on the healthy greenery part of the meal as most of their hands were put up in refusal of her salad offering.

That is, until she arrives back at the foot of the table near where Princess Emma was holding court conversation with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth of Belgium, next to her fifth brother in law Mattias and eighth brother in law Prince Peiter and his wife Gloria Lujza of Portugal.

Seated between them was their royal guest of honor, the young woman with the short cropped cocoa brown hair that, from the back, reminded Elsa of the disturbingly chopped hairstyle of Cousin –

"Yes. I think I could manage a salad. Thank you." The sickly in her stomach with all the new sights and sounds, Prussian Princess placidly turns her head around to politely at least make eye contact with the hard-working server of her meal.

 _Rapunzel?!_

 _Elsa_?!

Both young women nearly cry out the other's name. But, fortunately, in this public setting, they each catch themselves, as green and blue eyes merely bulge out to look at one another with the silently mouthed question: ' _What are you doing here?!'_

"You know this maid, Princess Rapunzel? Has she worked for you before? Elsie his new here in Egeskov, just come to us for the King's birthday celebration as extra help, as Mrs. Folmer, our housekeeper, tells me. But I do hope she can stay longer. I think Elsie suits us here in Egeskov very well, already pitching in like a good trouper when the other maid twisted her ankle." Pleasant Princess Elizabeth offers, seeing the instant recognition passing between the visiting Corona Princess and the pretty new maid.

"Y-y-yes. She was a faithful, much loved companion of my cousin, Princess Anna, in Arendelle for years." Rapunzel, stretched the facts around a bit, without telling the truth of how Elsa was Anna's dearest partner, closest friend and tireless companion, AKA 'big sister' who would pick up and clean up, braid up and take care of her little sister _almost_ like a dutiful servant would.

"We've missed you… Elsie." With a chuckle at her voice, Rapunzel had been around her hubby Eugene Fitzherbert for too long not to pick up some of his artful dodging. And also let a sly tease slide in, accompanied by a knowing smile that soon is turned into a double sisterly giggle that no one but they two were privy to the absurdity thereof.

* * *

 _Søværnet_ – Royal Navy of Denmark

 _Landcrabbe –_ landlubber in Danish

 _Lefse_ – pancake in Danish

 _meu querido_ – 'my dear' in Portuagese

Боже мой! ( _boishe moi)_ – My God!

 _Tsvetnaya Bolonka_ \- Russian fluffy small breed dog

неуклюжая девушка! _(Nyuclujya Jyubuschka)_ –clumsy girl!

Блеск ( _Blysk_ )– Sparkle in Russian

отец ( _Ahtsets)_ –Father in Russian

конфетка _(Konfitka)_ – Sweetie in Russian

Мой мальчик ( _moi manchik)_ – my boy in Russian

Нет _(nyet)_ – No in Russian

Мой мальчик ( _moi manchik)_ – my boy in Russian

* * *

 _"Be our Guest Be our Guest! Put our service to the test..."_

 _You can't help but sing along your infectious song with this fun, engaging chapter title, Lumiere! ^0^ And Anna was bringing a little Christmas in August to all of those young Westergaard daughters! Our Feistypants sure lets her light shine bright no matter where she is! ^_^_

 _Did you enjoy this week's romp into Egeskov castle's domestic/ servant side with Elsie the Maid serving up dinner in the Banquet Hall of Hans' castle home? ^_^ We've met all the princes and princesses now (Isn't Russian fun?). And even the Duke of Weselton and the ambassadors that attended Elsa's coronation are all here! Good thing no one ever notices the help…_

 _And finally Rapunzel discovered that Elsa is here in the Southern Isles too! Hmm…It looks like some of our Danish Princes have_ _spotted her as well..._

 _My best friend of a big sister, BSBFF ( Big Sister Best Friend Forever! ^o^) Setsuna's amazing remastered CG portraits of the SI brothers and their princess wives, as well as King Herbert and Queen Louise are now up on Tmblr under: queenelsawestergaard dot tumblr dot com (without the spaces; and of course, change to the correct symbol period '.' instead of 'dot')_

 _She made these special portraits just for me! I am the luckiest little sister in the world to have such a nice and talented older sibling who encourages my writing with her brilliance! (Sisterly love is flowing around these parts here! Like Elsa & Anna are good sisters!) :)_

 _Please go and check out how we envisioned these 12 handsome Princes in their Naval uniforms, along with their multinational princess partners! Now you can see what my cast of characters in my sequel book, "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" look like too! Hope you like them!_

 _We've once again met up with the entire princely cast of the Southern Isles! I wanted to flesh out some more of their character personalities, especially in respect for Hans' big brothers' relations with their wives (the good, the bad and the ugly). And we've finally been introduced to those elusive Russian princesses of twins Rune and Ruddi's. Maria's curious and wide-eyed, but that Eugenia has quite a temper, doesn't she?! But she did predict Rapunzel will be having twins! WHEE! (Doing some further research on the original Rapunzel tale, twins were mentioned as the children of the girl in the tower and her prince' forbidden romance. So I said 'Why not?! I always wanted Eupunzel to have a boy myself, even if Anxelin the girl has been predicted for Disney Descendants. She could have an unmentioned twin brother. And why wouldn't lucky pants Flynn Rider gets 2 for the price of 1?!)_

 _Please review the story for me and tell Setsuna which new Westergaard Prince of_ _Denmark_ _and which married Princess you liked best! (There's two familiar pairs there that don't quite count as new! But we had to include in our Westergaard bloodline Helsa & Eupunzel, too! They make quite gorgeous couples...drool drool... Kristanna is jealous not to get a portrait done here! But they're no relation to those dashing and debonair Westergaards - Anna is happy to say! She'll take her Snow Prince/ Wind Whisperer Kristoff anyday to those tall dark and handsome Danish royals. Though a few of the gorgeous ones are tempting...^#^)_

 _I look forward to your tasty reviews on this first August episode as the story drama continues! As you just saw, some of our main cast is being reunited! Rapunzel and Elsa have discovered one another at the dinner, but each princess has kept her cool. (Ice Queen Elsa's ace at that! :)_

 _God bless!_

 _HarukaKou_

 _(P.S. My birthday month of August has just begun! So get ready for a lot of storytime in my late-month days off! The exciting climax to this story arc is coming…I've got a lot of shocker surprises planned when the stars of this Frozen Again sequel all meet up again! ^0^ So much inter-personal relationship drama is planned! So stay tuned, Frozen friends!)_


	15. Chapter 15-Something's Rotten in Denmark

_Hi everybody! I've just added a part near the end you may want to read again that's vital to the flow of the story! Sorry! I guess I was so birthday partying last night, I forgot all about that part I wanted to include! If you've already read through this chapter, Please just read the ending section again where some royally interesting characters showed up! Either way, Enjoy the_ _exciting ride!_

 _HarukaKou_

 _We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 15**

 **"Something is Rotten in the State of** **Denmark** **"**

The stereoscopic world for little Pascal from the veiled chameleon's point of view could be classed as a daunting insurmountable challenge. But the plucky cold-blooded creature that hailed from a highly specialized clade of old world lizards was always game for everything that crossed his zygodactylism footed path, even if it meant crossing an in-motion drawbridge over a predator-ridden moat.

From modeling dress-up clothes in sewing circles to adding his prehensile tail's multitasking usefulness in sculpting, cooking, cleaning, or ventriloqy tasks, Pascal had seen it all—way more than a normal chameleon would ever see in his regular habitat.

And when his best girl Rapunzel threw roguish thief Flynn Rider into the mix, the bright green tinted chameleon with the physiological ability to change the color of his skin had learned to roll with it and adapt.

That is, especially where the other sensitive subject of human physiological social signals were concerned.

Rapunzel had whispered instructions into Pascal's ear, with a good luck kiss to his forehead, then continued to find Anna and Kristoff and let them know that she was going to stay for dinner at Egeskov Castle—maybe even spend the night, so as not to worry.

Pascal had used his reptilian not-so-great sense of smell to locate the gang who were supposedly waiting for word from back in the town of Kvaerndrup. But Sven's pungent reindeer, musky odor was easy to zero in on. Although his mountain man partner Kristoff's testosterone charged scent, came a close second.

So when the eager chameleon's rapid four legs expedite him down the Danish town of Kvaerndrup's outer road paths towards an outbuilding livery stable, Pascal feels a bit surprised and discomfited at the strange sound frequencies that even his poor sense of hearing detected upon arrival.

 ** _HOMNN! M-MOANN! HOMMNNN! HOMMNN! MOO-OANN!_**

Peeking into the small stable's closed barn door with one of his independently mobile, piercing, big red-orange pupil eyes cautiously peering in, the other closed tight, Pascal blinks wide.

On a mussed bed of hay, Sven was thrashing about making guttural noises. The reindeer's muscular legs tucked under him were kicking out, as the female reindeer stable mate beside him nuzzles the Rangifer bull's convulsing head.

Upon further investigation, with both eyes wide open now, Pascal gleans that his large reindeer friend must have been having a nightmare that his companion doe was trying to quell with her caring nudges in mind whispered terms of endearment to the tormented bull.

Sven's eyes slowly flutter open wider as Svala's tenderly deep voice reassures the traumatized from the recent battle reindeer that all was now well and at peace as she gently licks his tremulous muzzle.

As Pascal's 360° arc of vision take in the scene of the reindeer with the cracked off, splintered and still knitting to heal, battle scarred left antler that epitomized the peaceful beast's heroic deeds, the chameleon scampers over to where Sven's head was now resting atop Svala's comforting tan furry neck.

"Homn?" Sven's groggily opened eyes, after gazing up at Svala with a bashfully shy, yet gratefully affectionate look, finally focuses upon the small green lizard sitting on the hay strewn ground of the stable, mere centimeters before his warm, dry nose.

In a series of the didactyly hand gestures, bulged eye pivots and prehensile tail pointing, all in vain, Pascal does his best to impart the message Rapunzel had for her cousins first to these reindeer friends.

But a tired Sven was not coherent enough to play charades at this descending twilight hour.

First the chameleon colors himself an orangey gold, his crests and horns sticking out every which way in the lizard's best attempt to copy Kristoff's careless, unkempt hairstyle. Pascal's cheeks puff along with his nasal orifice with a stern male expression crossing his face.

Shaking his head when that doesn't work as both rangifers stare back at him blankly, quick change Pascal decides on a different tact. The expressive chameleon then uses his double toed feet and long extensor curled tail to emulate Anna's 'braids' at the sides of his head with the wavelength of light reflected crystal organelles just beneath the superficial layer of his skin he then turned a lovely carroty orange in pigment.

{Homn-na! Homn-na!"} Clapping his happy feet to the stable ground at the thought of Kristoff's gal to Svala's smiling relief, a fully awake and recovered Sven replies in his sincerest try to speak and relate the human word ' _Anna'_ in positive recognition.

Now that he got their attention, Pascal raises his long swirly tail until its muscles curled into a question mark, his two front feet spread out up in the air before his inquiring eyes in a quizzical manner.

"Homn!" Rising to his four-legged hooves, Sven takes the initiative to scoop the inquisitive lizard onto his affirmatively snorting nose. With the knowledge that his stable mate Svala would intuitively be at his side, Sven kicks open the barn door. He peers out, looking both ways down the dusky sky's road before utilizing his newfound flight power to scale the sky upon the winds that his best friend now whispered upon.

Mentally reaching out to contact Kristoff, Sven, with a firmly gripped-on Pascal, races the sky towards Egeskov Castle's vista at the edge of darkness skyline when the flying reindeer instinctively picks up the Wind Whisperer's lifeforce signature in that direction.

* * *

The five course dinner in the Royal Banquet Hall of Egeskov featuring the cook's trademark meal of roast pheasant and special Danish potatoes had concluded with no further incident.

Folmer the Butler had seen to it that Elsie the maid was quickly and quietly relieved before she disrupted the meal additionally. The elderly Butler had taken his wife's – the housekeeper – firm direction in feminine intuition to remove any unnecessary temptation of a pretty new maid at his service from Master Didrik's line of sight.

As Princess Rapunzel had been wined and dined and spoiled with sweet dessert, though her woozy stomach protested, she had done her best to be as personable, friendly and companionable as a considerate guest should be. Just as was expected of the royal representative of her kingdom at this important royal occasion, her upright mother Queen Arianna had been training her lost girl for the past few years to fit in with upper class society.

But Elsa's appearance made Rapunzel long for the meal to be over already so she and her tall blonde cousin could have a confab about the pressing subject of their mutually discovered pretense in this particular foreign kingdom.

Nonetheless, as the Royal family move to partake their after-dinner aperitifs, hobnobbing with their royal guests and dignitaries, Rapunzel, as a regal Princess, must deal with all the niceties and polite culture of the day. Although agitated, the Prussian girl continues to respond to the sophisticates' questions and address all those curious visitors introducing themselves to her as she intermingles with the guests after dinner with her vague, courteous responses.

Treated as guest of honor in reverence to Mother Superior, the Prussian girl had spent the majority of the evening dinner speaking to Crown Prince Kaleb's wife, Princess Emma at the foot of the table, the Italian ambassador Carreras and his wife Francesca across from him, as well as Prince Mattias and his wife, Princess Elisabeth close by.

Rapunzel had waved back to Princess Hermine, despite her husband Berte's confiscation of her wine glass and forbidding glare for eating denied certain foods where they were at the middle of the long banquet table.

The hesitant Corona Princess was glad that Princess Gloria Lujza and her husband Prince Peiter were only a few seats down. The loud Portuguese woman often was able to intercept communication for her new friend when Rapunzel was unsure of her own veiled facts about certain taboo subjects such as her real reason for visiting Egeskov or the questionable whereabouts of her missing husband, Eugene.

From the proper British motherly type older Princess Emma, who was well informed of household affairs as the ruling Lady of Egeskov for years, Rapunzel gained that 'Elsie' the parlour maid/ chambermaid/ milkmaid/ serving maid had come highly recommended, according to Princess Marguerite's ladies maid Daphne. Elsie had recently joined just two days ago as a servant for the King's birthday party celebration service.

The invaluable new maid had been praiseworthy for immediately helping out when the usual pair of serving maids had run into an unfortunate accident just before the dinner began.

Princess Emma assured Rapunzel that her cousin's dear, former domestic Elsie would certainly be receiving extra compensation at the end of her temporary service for so accommodatingly pitching in for this event.

And of course, in reciprocation, Rapunzel had been prompted to tell, over the fresh served delicious dish of apple dressing pheasant, with the melted butter coated Danish roast potato with parsley and browned parmesan seasoned breadcrumbs that had been sliced in a spiral ring presented before her nauseas eyes, all about how cherished a maidservant /companion young 'Elsie' was to Rapunzel's Norwegian cousins up north.

"My youngest cousin Anna always loved Elsie, like a sister." Rapunzel states after much prompting and prodding from Princess Elisabeth who was seated diagonally across from her.

"Why ever did the poor child leave beautiful Arendelle Castle to work here as a maid for us in gloomy old Egeskov? I've heard that Arendelle is a mysterious priceless jewel." As the group begins to adjourn the banquet table when the meal was finished, the Princess of Portugal was truly a curious ordinary woman more than a subtle rich snob. Passing some seats down the regal rows of high class society folk in a bad-mannered beeline to join her new friend. Lujza slings a familiar arm around Rapunzel, deliberately pulling the small Corona girl away from the Czechoslovakian ambassador who was, as etiquette permitted, about to ask for Rapunzel's arm.

The short and obese dignitary, as a single widower, had no wife of his own anymore, and was looking forward to being Rapunzel's escort for the remainder of the night.

Princess Emma gives her rude younger sister a raised brow look of admonishment for both offensively intercepting the Czech envoy and mocking her husband's homeland.

"What? That coquettish little Russian Princess at least had the courage to say what we all have been thinking." Princess Gloria Lujza shrugs her similarly brutally honest shoulders to husband Peiter, who nearly chokes over his last mouthful of red wine. Ignoring her older sister-in-law, spicy Lujza prompts with a joggled arm and glance of her eyes for her Prince Peiter to lead unattended-by-her-own-escort Rapunzel towards the Admiral's Room where the guests were converging.

"Tsk. Tsk, tsk. Don't let Father hear your wife say anything so disdainfully scathing about our beloved Egeskov, Peiter. You may be disowned. Like Hans." Never careful with his insensitive teasing words, nor his pitiless actions, Prince Didrik saunters past, commenting and swirling his already empty glass of brandy as the footman wordlessly refills his alcoholic beverage.

Peiter was already looking sheepishly at his big brother Prince Anders' suspicious, accusatory eyes. Pompous and proud Prince Kaleb, who also had been close by the party enough to hear, as wise Magistrate of the estate, merely purses his lips together to a tight line. He strokes his well coiffed beard as he makes his rounds around the royal sitting room where his guests had moved for after dinner coffee, tea and refreshment.

"We will pretend we did not hear that, Peiter. Be sure you attend to our other guests, as well, Emma." The strict eldest prince was already feeling the weight of the charge of the kingdom strongly since his father the King had taken ill. In his deep lofty tone, Prince Kaleb admonishes his younger brother and instructs his wife as he dutifully moves to converse with some of the important ambassadors in the other corner of the room.

Silently listening in, as next in line sibling, Prince Anders makes his cold and calculating entrance. Anders gives his older brother a dismissive glance as he places a cool hand on Rapunzel's surprised shoulder.

"How are your parents, Princess Rapunzel? I have heard on the royal news' grapevine that your dear father, King Friedrich of Corona is quite unwell as of late. So much so, we hardly expected our invitation extended to him and your dear mother Queen Arianna to be fulfilled by such a lovely young daughter, traveling unchaperoned on her own. King Friedrich must be in a very bad way to not attend such an officious occasion of a vital ally and neighboring nation." With a wheedlesome smile that belied his loosely veiled hidden meanings, the sly, insipid 47-year-old Prince with the piercing navy blue eyes pauses in his step to ask Rapunzel the pointed insinuating question. After all, many of his business partners would like to know firsthand in their insider trading ventures if the King of Corona was incapacitated and ready to hand over his throne to his recently found, inexperienced daughter and her common criminal thief of a husband to rule.

"Umm… My father is feeling much better lately, thank you. He wishes he were here… _I'm sure_ …" Rapunzel crosses her fingers behind her back with the little white lie as she continues forward. "I was just… happening to be in the area… And I thought I would look up my old friend…" Rapunzel is a loss for words here. Princesses Lujza, Elisabeth and Emma were already intermingling at the refreshment table, abandoning her to be uncomfortable before this Prince Anders' prosecutorial accusatory stares alone.

"Ah, quite… Hans, you refer to, if I recall." Cool and collected Prince takes a thought provoked swig of his glass of port. "How is it you two met again? I was never aware that my youngest brother traveled to Prussia in his youth. Was it from the days of his naval tour in the Søværnet?" Devious Anders runs a hand along his deep garish brown, slicked back hair as his one raised brow assesses Rapunzel coolly.

"Oh, yes… No… I mean… Hans and I became well acquainted…because I'm _extremely_ close to one of his older brothers. Really close." Rapunzel doesn't have to cross her fingers this time as she smiles her most believable toothy smile up to the tall Dane. She gives the inquisitive older man her best answer, as he, unwilling to let her off the hook so easily, leads Rapunzel by the arm towards the fireplace and lights up his pipe.

"One of my brothers? Who?" With an inquisitively tilted brow, Anders presses on, suspiciously gazing down at Rapunzel's flimsy excuse, the clever man not so easily fooled.

 ** _Cough! Cough! Cough!_**

Rapunzel, truly affected by the noxious smoke of pipes and cigars, uses the suddenly presented convulsing reason to excuse herself hurriedly from the room where most of the other Royals and dignitaries were assembled. In between the Admiral's Room and Knight's Hall a great deal of the guests were preoccupied by supporter of the Arts, Princess Isabelle's, introduction of some of the operatic singers who she had arranged to sing for the King's birthday garden party tomorrow.

 _Hmm…The Princess of_ _Corona_ _claims to be close to one of my siblings… She didn't seem to be that comfortable with Didrik… So which other one of my brothers is a cad with this Prussian pretty? This bit of intrigue may become advantageous later on._ In a contemplative glare of annoyance at the slip of a girl who managed to slip away from his inquisition, Prince Anders wonders to himself offhandedly, unconcerned for the well-being of the flighty creature who made such a display of herself, simply for the pipe he was smoking.

In halo after halo of puffed smoke expelled from his lips, Anders applies each of his siblings to an illicit fling with this curious princess, and the consequences he could drag out of it, in his corrupted mind to lord over them in future dealings.

* * *

Dashing up the stairs to the room Peiter and Lujza had already designated to her, Rapunzel, was as equally torn between curiosity to attend the King's Garden Party celebration tomorrow and the overwhelming desire to just pick up and leave before she innocently caused trouble for her peaceful kingdom with the misleading lies. And she now had the added intrigue of discovering Elsa here as well on her plate.

"Oof." The three and a half months pregnant young woman pushes open the bedroom door, not at all expecting to see Olaf standing up on a piled high with a snow ice barrier on the carpet beside the bed. Beside Olaf, there was a brown haired, blue-eyed little boy having a pitched battle snowball fight with a trio of tiny, armless little snowmen who were a sixth of Olaf's size. The small, double mounds of snow creatures had charcoal dots for eyes that appeared to be either plotting how to launch catapulted snowballs or laughing at Olaf from where they were trapped down between the bed and the fortress palisade and rampart curtain walls of white snow.

 ** _S-SMASSHH!_**

A priceless vase takes a direct hit and splinters into a porcelain shard heap onto the floor right at Rapunzel's startled feet just as she closes the door behind her.

"Whoops!" Olaf sings, more pleasantly happy to be 'playing' with his 'little brothers' than being culpable with guilt for the accident he and his associates caused.

"Olaf! What are you doing?! Who is this boy? And where did all the little snowmen come from!?" Whispering maddeningly in a panic, Rapunzel was already feeling like chucking up before she entered the room, pretty upset of her upheaval day and the full course meal that she only partook a little of the salad thereof.

She did not need this extra aggravation on her already beleaguered psyche and sickly body right now.

"I suppose I'm to blame, Cousin Rapunzel. These mischievous snowgies had stowed away with Marshmallow when I packed up for my journey to Corona. Lukas was just doing me a favor by seeing to the big guy's evening meal and he followed the naughty little creatures as they climbed the castle wall. They must have sensed me here, when I came to this room so we could talk after you finished dinner. And Olaf just popped out of the bag when I was disciplining these little guys for being so reckless, zeroing in on your room to see me. Lukas could've been hurt, chasing these playful imps. He should not have done such a foolish thing, after all, I'm responsible for his charge while his Mama's busy, but boys will be brave boys." Elsa, through her discombobulated explanations, scruffs the obliging chubby boy's head.

Lukas' bright cerulean blue eyes were glowing with the boyish thrill of discovering these rascal snow creations and chasing them up the side of the tall storied edifice in a real, actual adventure. Luckily a trellis was right below this window that connected to a ledge along the arcade that led up to this second story floor.

"Elsa!? What are **_you_** doing **_here_** in **_Egeskov?_**!" Rapunzel, forgetting her bilious stomach for a few seconds, rushes over to grasp her blonde relation's shoulders. Elsa was still elegant, even clothed in a low class maidservant's black and white drab, dowdy garb that couldn't dampen her sparkle.

"The same as you, I presume, Cousin Rapunzel." Using literary license, the Ice Queen smiles coyly as she uses her magical fingers to undo some of the snowgies' messes and sweep up the broken fine porcelain vase with a cold wind that whisks the rubbish out the window Olaf was helpfully pointing to from his post atop the snowmound person.

"You see, Mama conjured up this trip for me so I could come down to Corona and fetch your mother, my Aunt Arianna, with the happy news of Mama and Papa's return. She convinced Papa that I should bring back Prince Eugene and Prince Hans, as well, to receive their award commendations at the Royal ceremony my parents have been planning for their welcome home celebration in Arendelle, next month. So I was on my way to Prussia, when I felt this undeniable urge to land here in Denmark and check if Prince Hans came home first. He has no other place of residence I am aware of, so I wasn't sure I couldn't perhaps find something beneficial here…" Elsa trails off, her eyes glancing around this foreign castle room and past the window's sky over this castle estate she never thought herself bold enough to infiltrate on her own. Elsa was a bit proud of herself that she did have the gumption to try to be bold like Anna. And though she found no trace of Hans' existing address, the Ice Queen was glad to be able to meet Hans' father, King Herbert, if nothing else, on this unanticipated visit.

"With no formal escort to announce me, and not wishing to cause a stir, it simply became more expedient for me to play the part of a maid and be able to poke around unfettered. Unfortunately I haven't a clue to Hans' current whereabouts, though I've already been at it for over two days." Elsa runs a frustrated hand through her loose, silky blonde tresses as Rapunzel sits on a setee at the foot of the bed, listening spellbound.

"But I have met King Herbert. He's really very sweet…in a way…sort of. There's something about him that's almost…sad…I just wanted to stay until tomorrow to wish him a ' _Happy birthday'_ before I left… _for Hans' sake_ … But I don't know how practical that idea is. And certainly upon reflection, this ludicrous, farcical scheme of my own harebrained accord has little rationale…" Elsa trails off again with her uncensored straightforward explanation of why and how she came to be here. All Elsa knew was that her face was burning with an uncommon blushing heat at the admittance that the reserved, elegant and inward young Queen had been chasing after a young man so foolishly.

"Come near, Elsa." The solitary platinum blonde was unaware of how glad she was to be softly embraced in her cousin's arms right at that moment. For the absurd ridiculousness of it all and the questionable motivation and chimeric delusions of dashed dreams and aspirational hopes to find her missing 'Prince Charming,' had come to a head as being all but futile and fruitlessly inefficacious.

"But Elsa, anything we do for the one we love is never impractical. I think it's really a sign of how true your love for Hans is, to dare to come out of yourself – out of your inner window that you've just been looking out of—and go that extra mile to search for the one your heart yearns for and knows that it's meant to be with. I consider that beautiful, Cousin, not foolish. And so rewarding in the end, if you dare to believe and follow your dream!" Holding her palpitating stomach, Rapunzel's words of wisdom and own heart's experienced sentiment were poignantly touched by Elsa's devotion as she sits them both back down to the setee.

The two women share a tearful eyed, completely bonded, feminine hug that was totally lost on Olaf and Lukas, never mind the brainless snowgies, as they all pause in their snowball battle to stare up at the two beauties in curious wonder.

"Why are they crying? Lukas, why are Elsa and cousin Rapunzel crying?" Olaf whispers out the side of his crooked mouth to his just-as-perplexed, shrugging new friend about the girlish tendency to break into inexplicable waterworks from time to time as the pair cease their defensive snowball volley to plop on the snowmound that Elsa had created to barricade the snowgies in.

But the ingenious little ice creations refuse to give up _their_ erstwhile naughty behavior, as the unattended snowgies balance and stretch atop one another until the impish beings could hop on the bed. The trio aid one other silently to bounce on the mattress and slide down the snowmound mini fortress prison parapet for escape.

"Oh, no you don't!" Elsa wipes her tears away with the back of her one hand, the other targeting the already mischievous snowgie devised doorknob turned to open the guest bedroom door to slam shut again, just in time with her quick powers.

Elsa ice magically blows a whirlwind of her cold variety in cool streams of frost to halt the escaping creatures.

 ** _SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!_**

The trio of miscreants then fall splat into the carpetbag on the bed just where she masterfully directs them.

"Okay. It's getting dark now. I have to take these little monsters back to Marshmallow. You rest here with Olaf until I get back. And Lukas, I saw your Mama in the hall on her way to Princess Marguerite's room just now two doors down on the right. She'll be worried not to find you up in the attic. So I'll take you there and drop you off with her first." Taking charge, Elsa grasps hold of the compliant boy's hand. "When I get back, you and I will put our heads together and decide what we're going to do next on our crazy 'Operation Egeskov' infiltration, Rapunzel." Elsa makes an attempt at light humor to a queasy, bilious Rapunzel. The Prussian girl smiles as Olaf fluffs up the pillows of her bed with welcoming outstretched branch arms and hops down to steady the poor wobbly young mother to her bed for a lie down.

 _I wish Anna was here, too. She would have loved this nutty incognito adventure we've gotten ourselves ensconced in._

Elsa smirks at her own random supercilious thought of how her zany, audacious little sis' antics would fit right in here. But the unwelcome thought makes the already pale Queen even more deathly white pallid as she stealthily makes her way with the trio of snowgies she had ice mystically plopped into Olaf's no longer empty carpetbag.

That's when she sees Rapunzel's lower lip guiltily wobbling on her not well disguised features.

"Don't tell me. Anna''s here, too?" Elsa asks with as much trepidation as assurance.

"Ummm, well… Yes… They're in town. She and Kristoff are waiting for me to report if I found a trace of where we can locate Hans. She was so worried when I told her that he was…" A mumbling, spilling the beans Rapunzel starts to admit in a conscience-stricken soft tone. That is, until she realizes that Elsa didn't know yet that Hans was near death the last time Rapunzel had seen him and Eugene take off from that blighted steamship.

Her face, from illness and fatigue, peaked in rueful abashed shame from her near slip-up and fear for her own unpleasant mea culpa disclosure to Elsa of all people, goes a dreadful shade of red. The overwhelming guilt made her feel like she was a kid with her fingers caught in a fragile glass cookie jar that was about to crack into a thousand shards if she continued to speak. So Rapunzel clamps up, biting her bottom lip until it starts to bleed.

"Fine. We'll talk later when I get back. You just rest for now, cousin." Compartmentalizing her priorities, Elsa, confused by her cousin's guilty words, sends a soft, cool breeze in Rapunzel's direction giving Olaf a raised look to care for the ill woman until she got back.

"Come on, Lukas." Elsa then takes the little boy by the hand as Olaf bids him goodbye for now and she leads him two doors down the hall of Egeskov's second floor.

Elsa had spent enough time cleaning up the suites of rooms to become familiar with which brother Royal Prince and wife took up residence, once Daphne pointed it out to her.

Elsa peers into the room to ensure it was empty and then enters it with the boy at her side.

"Daphne? Daphne where are you? …Where did she go?" Swiftly inspecting the bedroom's interior suite of rooms, Elsa lets out a frustrated sigh when she sees the open suitcase at the foot of the bed that had a fine lady's night dress and robe half laid out on it. Many of the other dresses were hanging or draped over the sofa and divan in need of some new hangers to replace the broken wire devices. The pair of hangers in the large boudoir that was left open were falling apart, dilapidated, with a man's suit tossed on the chair to the side. Its hanger had chivalrously replaced the heavy crimson dark red velvet dress' broken one sometime last night.

"Okay. Your Mama must be fetching some new hangers to replace those broken ones. She'll be back shortly, I'm sure. You just sit here quietly and wait for her, okay, Lukas?" Elsa smiles at Lukas as she plunks the young boy down upon the sofa chair behind the open closet door.

"I have to go now to bring these bad little snowgies out to keep Marshmallow company." In a frazzle, the young Queen struggles to hold onto the carpetbag with the energetic bouncing creatures on the rampage inside.

"Okay, Miss Elsie. I'll sit here quietly until Mama returns." Lukas was indeed a very well-behaved child. Elsa was grateful for that, as she dazzles him with one of her most brilliant smiles, causing the small boy to adore her even more.

"Good boy." Elsa pats one of his deliriously smiling chubby cheeks with her cool fingertips before she ducks back out into the hall with her urgent cargo.

* * *

So, with the carpetbag full of kinetic energized bobbing up and down snowgies in her hands, Elsie the maid surreptitiously glides down the stairs of Egeskov as quickly as possible and still remain unnoticed. Employing her cryokinetics to a small degree, she floats across the hall, right past the two currently occupied reception rooms with the multitude of visitors and out through the back exit door.

As Elsa moves past the vulgar display of beheaded trophies, in her haste, the Ice Queen did not notice that one particular pair of keen wolfish eyes, not hanging on the wall, had caught a glimpse of her frosty wake and was surveying her movements from afar.

The predator springs to life, on the hunt for the sport of chasing this sweet pale skin to prey in the dusky sunset nightfall.

Elsa moves on light feet to stealthily race out the rear door exit and into the falling darkness to rush to Marshmallow's side in order to return to him these cunning cuties inside the carpetbag who were proving quite a handful. As if in a ballet dance, the Ice Queen trips across the ice bridge formed under her heeled feet towards the area behind the Egeskov Chapel.

And she was totally unaware that she had been observed and just as covertly followed by a furtive figure in the falling shadows of night, who stands stunned by her ice mastery to then gaze across the frosted surface of the moat with a dark expression…

* * *

 _Earlier, before nightfall… A few kilometers outside of the Funen village ofOdense,_ _Denmark_ _…_

 ** _CCR-RA-ACCKK!_**

"Keep moving, you whelps!" With the crack of a harsh whip, one of the callous, disrespectful henchman in a dark hooded cloak with a sigil of the intertwined anchor of the Royal Danish Søværnet entwined in gold upon it, yells out when Eugene stumbles at the old textile mill's hydraulic wheel that harnessed the power of the waterwheel attached to the dam and mill pond outside.

The sadistic lackey of Count Rügen found some sick joy in watching the pair of fancy-pants young men toil their already beat up, whipped and flogged, painful bodies in a monotonous round and round march pushing a huge wooden wheel. Their immobilized wrists had been shackled around the torture contraption that they must push together with all their might to move.

This outdated technology had been originally designed for pair of workhorses to power, let alone two weakened and fatigued men.

After taking Aged P to stand trial in the King's court, despite Hans and Eugene's beaten down protests for the old coot, the corrupt, evil Count Rügen had left some time ago before sunset. He had instructed his minions to continue torturing the captive brothers until he returned for them.

This abandoned warehouse building was one that the wicked villain had bought and owned as a front for a great deal of his criminal misdeeds to be covered up behind the guise of an old worn down, rarely used Royal tanning / textile mill storehouse.

The water propelled mill wheel, now often put to wicked use, was still in working order, proving to be one of Master Rügen's most carnal cruel devices of water torture that could make any man spill his darkest secrets or see his way to complying with the wicked man's vile manipulations and demands.

The two exhausted young men had been working as slaves in place of the hired couriers and draft horses who worked in this mill's inherent filth of the tough and dirty tanning leather process. The water-harnessed power this wheel directed had been rerouted for more sinister uses of this torture chamber in the abandoned tanning mill outbuilding secretly for years.

Eugene and Hans had been brutally whipped periodically as they plodded along for the past hour or so since Rügen, with Aged P in tow, left the semi converted, steam powered textile mill. The boys didn't have much time or energy left in their sapped bodies to do much to halt the nefarious fiend from dragging the poor old man off to a mock monkey trial in some Royal Court.

"Ohh…Owww…Egwh. Yuck! Something is rotten in the state of Denmark! I hate smelly old leather boots… Whoah! Why the hell are there dead animal parts dangling everywhere!? Can we open a window or something in here, boys? The smell is way worse than the manly color brown of the Snuggly Duckling – _ouch_! Did I mention I hate being at the receiving end of whips even less. Damn it, man!" When he pauses in his vented tirade to finally glance around at the leather hides skins of dead animals hanging in every corner of this creepy place, Eugene winces and squeals with a pain wracked whine as he is whipped yet again in punishment for his loose tongue.

With a low growl, the thief forces his overtired, overused and overworked body to start moving again in rhythm with his silently straining little brother's admirably indomitable human spirit to keep marching forward, around and around, to manpower the large mill wheel.

Trudging along in the circular horizontal wheel's motion, Hans glances out from beneath his sweat dripped brow and looks behind his shoulder to address Flynn's complaints, ignoring his own swarm of stinging foot-caned sores.

"It's a Royal tannery and leather making textile mill for Egeskov estate, Storbror. Those are probably the skins of the poor creatures that my brothers hunted to hang on the walls in the Castle for display purposes of their hunting prowess." Hans calmly addresses Eugene's not so tranquil queries as he too continues to move forward under their cruel captors' goading, vigilant presences.

"Oh, you make those older brothers of ours sound like a damn fun bunch, Lillebror. Quite a fine, cold-blooded family tree that you've rooted me to, Handsome." Eugene scoffs at his not so impressive genealogy.

"Yes, indeed." Hans may have been Westergaard, but there were certain activities and affluent sports that he, as an outcast, did not abide with entirely within accepted Royal male society.

"So what's our next move, Good-Lookin'? Got any good ideas in that handsome skull to break us out of this little shop of horrors?" Flynn murmurs to the young genius who always had one far out scheme or another to get them out of tight situations.

And after a deep breath taken, good old resourceful Hans does not disappoint.

"I have been devising a plan of escape from this tannery, Storbror, that requires both of our continued combined strength to give a sudden burst of focus acceleration in the opposing direction, to cause the impounded mill pond's water regulation to be overtaxed. Thus, we enable the already surging power looms of the textile mill's long unused section over there to distract the guards. All while the millrace carries water to the outer wheel still being harnessed by our energy to disguise our disassembly of this mechanical turbine behemoth that has been used for torture depravity from the looks of it, for far too long." Hans' laser like mind unloads this intense scheme to a slack-jawed Eugene. The intelligent redhead had already envisioned this great escape from this converted old textile mill for the pair of captive enslaved brothers and his lowered voice was conveying the plan thereof.

"Whoa. Us and what army? I need a bit of extra technical support here, Sideburns. This thing is steam powered, and will keep rotating no matter what high wire stunts you propose, Kid!" Eugene absorbs the lofty worded stratagem put to him with a skeptical disbelieving scoff.

"It's called 'industrial sabotage', Storbror." Hans turns his back continuing his circulating push on the lever before him. He then loops his bound wrist chains to reveal the exposed coils of the mechanism's turbine frame. "We merely introduce some non-shareable metal into the gear and cog system beneath this grate and it all comes to a grinding halt… Excuse the vernacular." With a disarming smile, Hans, unheard for his murmuring tones, returns to his forward momentum position. His lithe moving body seamlessly returns to place just in time for one of Rügen's burly five henchman to check up on the pair.

Hans whistles and smiles at the sinister man as innocent as a dove, while Eugene, with an incredulous facial expression, gives the apprehensive man a smirking shrug.

"How do you propose doing that with these shackles on, Kid?" Flynn Rider was a risk-taking adventurer and opportunistic crafty escapee himself enough to have his curiosity piqued by Hans' outrageous scheme. But his tightly bound wrists secured to the wheel and Hans' similar incapacitated ones, with no recourse of lockpicking this time, were a real downer.

Silently the redheaded Prince, once self-assured that the coast was cleared, lifts his supposed to be clamped tight, bound pair of wrists over his shoulder for Eugene to discreetly observe.

Eugene's jaw drops to see that the wily Dane had somehow managed to slip his emaciated wrists out from their iron shackles that had been chained together, until they were now loosely held in place by his hands.

"You son of a – How the hell did you do that, Handsome?!" Almost forgetting he did not wish to garner unnecessary attention, Eugene whispers in shock admiration, never ceasing to be amazed by his kid brother's penchant knack for intrepid surprises.

"It's all in the wrist action." With a smug grinned cocky smile upon his handsome mug, the Danish Prince then produces his secret to success. As a lifelong thief, Eugene had to hand it to the royal snob for his concealed skills that would impress any pickpocket. Hans slips to his stunned silent brother behind him the guard's shackle key that Hans had swiped earlier when Eugene was making such a ruckus before.

"I think I like you, Sideburns. You're one sly dog. Our sticky fingered charm must be in the blood." Flynn Rider was, for the first time in his life, glad that he was not born a loner in the world, friendless and unknown. But now that Hans Westergaard was at his side, Eugene Fitzherbert felt like he found not just that long-lost brother he'd never been searching for, but a true friend, too. And after all they had done and seen _(a little too much skin exposure information!)_ together as partners in crime, Eugene counted Hans as his new best friend.

 _In fact, he's the only man on earth who probably truly likes me…_

"Now, if I have extrapolated correctly, when we move, as proposed, at an accelerated pace, the augmented steam turbine's pressure should cause the unsustainable machinery to become wholly unstable." Hans too felt that same relied upon camaraderie for Eugene, under fire and danger for this most unlikely, but certainly, his favorite sibling.

And undoubtedly Eugene Fitzherbert was that and more.

"In layman's terms again, Lillebror?" Eugene had an inkling of what his compatriot was saying, but he couldn't hold back the tease of Hans' being too long-winded and verbose.

"Go fast. Go haywire. Go boom." His green eyes widen with each simple spoken word, Hans may have felt as if he was speaking to a kindergartener. But in a way, it was liberating.

Secretly puffed up with pride at his acumen and cleverness, Hans always felt that way when his well mulled over, cunning plans were on the verge of being put into action, to see if they really could fly off the page.

"That's more like it. Okay! I've got your back, Lillebror." Said under his breath for only Hans to hear, all serious now, Eugene covertly flexes his own freed wrists, though his pasted on smile was disturbingly reassuring to the nearest henchman who just passed by.

"Then let us commence this challenging endeavor to eradicate Instructor Rügen's contemptible, dastardly lair of torture."

"You and those high-faluting words, Kid!"

Even as Hans and Eugene quietly banter back and forth, the pair of them, as one motion, begin to move backwards. More and more quickly they spin the man-powered mainframe of the mechanical wheel that controlled the impounded mill race water that would be converted into steam to energize the sewing machinery in the dormant textile section of the tanning mill rather than the leather cutting tool sawmill they were supposed to be powering.

The secondary steam energy begins to be rerouted, just as Hans predicted to the leather goods textile portion of the converted old mill. When all fifty loom weaver machines surge alive quite noisily, they make the five guardsman jump to attention and move in to cautiously investigate the sewing factory half of the mill.

The industrial tools eerily spring to life in a mist of dust and cobwebs and raucous noise of grinding levers in the old abandoned spinning mill mechanics in the Industrial Revolution heyday some years back.

"Shall we?" Hans dangles his iron shackle handcuffs over the innards of the mill's spinning wheel apparatus that his booted foot had kicked open, garnering a wicked smirk from Eugene. The former criminal joins in the willful damage of property with his little brother like they were just a pair of naughty little kids, all over again.

"Let's ' _shall'_." Eugene takes a swipe at Hans' classy vocabulary as the two men cease their quick-paced treadmill run to simultaneously drop their abhorrent chained shackles down into the wheel's mechanics. With an earsplitting moan, the squealing metal and twisted steel innards come to a grinding halt, causing the trapped steam in the harnessed turbine to have no other exit but to go–

 ** _KA-BOOM!_**

Just as Eugene and Hans make a wild arm and long legged leap with their battered and beaten bodies from the mill wheel platform, metal pieces, cogs and busted coils spring from its machinery as the backed-up apparatus implodes. As does any further usage of this converted tannery mill and leather-making goods/torture factory, where chemicals, acids and cutting machinery were previously readily available for any sadistic user.

Pieces of leather tanned animal skins that took six months to fully cure were strewn all over the converted steam powered mill. It was now full of smoke and destroyed equipment as the contraption's rigged gadgetry was left in tattered disorder.

"Wow! _Cough cough!_ Do you know how to throw a blowout party, Sideburns, or what?!" When he is able to be loquacious again after the smoke somewhat clears, he slaps Hans on the back and turns over from his stomach flattened to the floor level position. With a coughed smile in admiration for his ingenious younger sibling, Flynn congratulates his destructive partner-in-crime who was lying in a prone heap beside him.

That is, until Hans doesn't respond. The lazy eyed thief notices that he had just applauded a thick piece of tanned red boar-skin leather rather than his skin and bones kid brother.

"Handsome? Where'd you—?!" Jumping to his painful feet, Eugene has to fan away the smoke before he could make out that Hans had been grabbed by two of the henchman who had caught on to their escape plot much too quickly.

One of the ugly lackeys was holding Hans arms behind his back while the other had his double barreled rifle aimed directly at Hans' face, the weapon pressed against his struggling cheek.

"The boss said that if they gave us trouble, we could arrange for 'an accident' in this old mill. Hee hee hee." A third dark-hooded henchman joins the pair of Hans' capturers.

"I like the sound of that." A fourth unscrupulous man cackles his unsavory plan to stage an accident for this loathsome pair of smartmouthed jerks.

"What about an accidental hanging?" The fifth wicked, sneering flunky arrives with an already noose rope tied threateningly.

"Nah! I've got a much better idea for these losers that will wipe the smug looks off their pretty boy faces…" The sadistic muscleman twice Hans' size, binds the grunting and struggling victim's arms behind his back and uses his dark eyes to gesture upwards for the rest of his crew of villains to look up to where a series of sharp hooks were hanging.

The sharp, rusted old meathooks were just ready for a slew of dead animal hides to undergo the laborious and time-consuming tanning process that transformed skinned hides into leather.

 ** _GULP!_**

Eugene's wide-eyed full attention is frightened out of his wits as his gaze too had been directed up to the razor-sharp, pointed objects and the intended repeated soakings in that huge vat of bubbling abrasive solutions directly below that would certainly burn the bare skin of a human man sheer off, if it was meant to tan the tough animal hides into leather.

"String little Lord Fauntleroy up there, boys, for his 'accidental' tanning! We'll see how handsome he still is after a dip in that mordant solution! Ha ha Ha! Hee hee hee!" The head henchman and his treacherous buddies, hand selected by Count Rügen for their unquestioning cruelty, laugh viciously at the idea of tossing this unwanted thirteenth son of the King alive in a bath of acid, if just to see what happened to his pretty boy face.

"Now, where did that worthless thief get off to? He's up next!" Another minion asks.

"I thought I saw his dilapidated form go flying in that direction, out cold." One of the other guardsman offers, pointing his gun, trained on Hans momentarily, in the opposite area for tanning.

"You three proceed with the tanning operation for the discarded prince. You! Come with me!" The head henchman signals to his armed gunmen to follow him, as a safety precaution, since the legendary Flynn Rider's fallen body was none too obvious in view anymore.

After koshing the redheaded Prince over his head just to daze him from struggling as they climb the ladder upward to the high hook lined string in order to hang him up like a wetsuit on a clothesline while the two remaining on the mill's dusty smoke-filled ground-floor go on a dubious search of the oddly absconded thief.

"The exits were all sealed tight and would take a battle ax to get through them. So that means that two-bit crook is still in here somewhere, sniveling and hiding in the corner. Come out, come out, wherever you are, Flynn Rider! We only want to give you a well needed bath! In acid! He hee hee ha ha ha ha!" This cackling lackey of Count Rügen considered himself a comedian it seemed from the volume of his hilarity.

But when, looking around in the dark corners of the dusty old mill, he bangs into something hard and metal, thinking he had crashed into a piece of machinery that belonged to the factory, it becomes no longer a laughing matter.

"Huh?" The henchman bangs his fist against the unrecognizable cylindrical mechanical device part above his head, to push it out of the way blocking him, but it does not give the expected hollow sound back.

Instead, a pair of muscled arms reaches around from beneath the dark bronze metal cylinder helmet and plated chest armor, attached to a large gold ring holding belts with a skull and crossbones buckle, to wrap around the constrained lackey's torso, causing the heinous man to almost let out a terrified scream. (Attila)

But before he has the chance, the captured henchman is crowned with a shovel wielded by a man with a big bulging stomach beneath his long maize tunic, a wild chin curtain orange beard and crop of hair with tattooed arms. (Tor)

The downed villain's armed companion immediately rushes to escape, only to be tripped up by the well turned toe of a tall, bare-chested man with a skinny gaunt face and artistic eye, wearing a pale fur vest. (Gunther)

Wildly scrounging for his gun, the evil henchman is just about to aim and fire at his smiling attacker when a great big hulking giant wearing a brown fur dress, dark boots and big reindeer horns on his helmet smashes his huge hammer down on the rifle, until its mouth was flattened. (Vladimir)

The henchman's itchy finger just manages to withdraw so as not to explode the back of a bullet in his own ugly face as another unfamiliar person wrestles the rifle away from the man and purposely twists its long barreled mouth into a figure eight pretzel as easy as if he were knitting a sweater. The hulking lummox then gives an angry _'you're next'_ glowering look on normally peaceful features, irked to have his friends so threatened. (Bruiser)

Unbeknownst to all the ruckus going on below, partially conscious Hans was just about to be ruthlessly hung on a coarse, pointed hook with the intention of being dumped into a bubbling vat of caustic acid, when a long, dark shadow is cast behind the trio of men who were tying the redhead up to the hook.

Flynn Rider, despite his own injuries, had clandestinely scaled the rickety wooden ladder that came from around the other side of the old mill. This ladder was no longer used to lead up to the high rafters for the tanning skins' hanging purposes because of its disrepair, but that didn't stop this sly individual.

With a sigh to his lot in life as an unintentionally inadvertent hero while he second-naturedly skirts deftly around the wrung-less ladder, Eugene Fitzherbert goes gung ho once again in his drive to rescue his little bro's skin.

Literally.

With a crazed running start, Flynn Rider throws his full weight against an accosted rope that he had looped and lassoed around the metal bars suspending the dropped hooks for the tanning. The daring thief swings his whole body through the air, his long legs split in every direction as, with abandon, Eugene lets out a primeval Tarzan war cry.

"Ohh-ohh-oh-oh-ohhhh!" His sleek running momentum swings Flynn straight towards where the trio of bad guys were attaching a bashed up and semi-conscious Hans to one of the protruding hooks for his acid bath doom.

 ** _WHOOSHHH!_**

And he flies right past, when the one henchman in Eugene's flailing direct path trajectory, leans down to retrieve the fallen cord that he was tying around Hans' crossed together ankles.

"DAMN!" Zipping through the empty air, unlucky Eugene realizes that his element of surprise had just been blown. But he wasn't the only one secretly watching from the gangplank winding around the top of the mill's musty stench of air to claim that prize.

 ** _P-POKKEE!_**

 ** _C-CRA-SSHH!_**

A white-haired old man's drunken skybound course, set by a tight rope around his bare waist, none too casually is launched by his theatre white face and pantomimed gloved big bodied mimicking mute of a compatriot on the other side of the gangplank. (Ulf)

The old man's drawn, pointed bow and arrow expertly sticks the bent over henchman in his wide butt. That sharp dead-on action causes the shrieking henchman to leap off the edge of the high gangway ledge to a bone crunching landing that was grateful to have just missed being plunged into the tanning solutions and acid vat awaiting his victim.

"There's how you do it, you young whippersnapper!" The old geezer with the Cupid white wings cries out, waving his little arrow and sorry excuse for a bow victoriously towards Eugene with a big broken toothed smile on his inebriated face. (Shorty)

"What?!" The other two villains left hurry to finish hanging Hans upon the nearest protruding hook. But that's when a slew of vicious rats storm the high elevation gangplank, sent off by their pit master to freak out the last standing pair of lackeys with the threat of their rabies-filled sharp fang bites.

As the two men make a run for it, kicking at the wily, brave and fang nipping rodents as they converge upon them and give chase, the retreating henchman ruthlessly push Hans' strapped body to dangle out over the acid vat as their last act of treachery.

The pulley-ed strung up hook quickly begins to slip and sink by gravity's pull down towards the dangerous caustic burning liquid, bringing Hans Westergaard seconds away from a painful death by acid scorched skin, burned alive…

 ** _SWOOSHH_**!

With another courageous and daring swing across to the other side of the wraparound gangplank he had finally aligned himself upon, undaunted Flynn Rider gallantly risks his life and limb once again to whoosh over the vat of disfiguring acid to grab hold tight of Hans on his descending rope and pull Hans close to him as the younger man was just awakening.

With sheer force of will and a taste of the luck he rarely had, Eugene grabs Hans off that meat hook and pulls him out of the way of danger just in the nick of time.

The two men gaze down at the ripped off fabric binding still around the metal hook as it dissolves in the acid vat with a sickening sizzling sound.

"Elsa…that should have been me."

Eugene wasn't sure if a deliriously passing out Hans, wistfully whispering the name of his longed for dreamgirl, had simply used the wrong verbal tense participle, or if the masochistic, self-blame department was running overtime in his little brother's even unconscious, remorseful psyche.

But the double weight of two men on his rope causes the not so tightly tied knot to slowly slip, and the pair of brothers start to plunge downwards over the burning tanning solution.

"Gotta work on my sailor knots. Oh, no." Flynn's droll voice says in a resigned unpanicked monotone to express his bad fate.

"Rider! Hold on!" But one more hook at the gangplank level reaches out to grasp the swaying other end of the rope just in time for Eugene's somewhat singed eyebrows to be saved.

A _Hook Hand_ , that is.

"We've got you, boys! Don't breathe too hard!" The Snuggly Duckling _hand_ -icapped piano player uses the leverage of the gangplank's steel railing to begin to hoist Hans and Eugene up from the dangerous acid bath and then as gently as possible lower them down to the mill's base floor of the tanning mill.

"Ouch! Ouch! Watch it! Who's breathing?!" Eugene chokes out as the spinning rope tangles the lasso around Hans and Eugene's torsos until the brothers were stuck together quite intimately.

 ** _YANK! YANK! PLOPP!_**

As big brother Eugene, feeling their ground crash imminent, takes the brunt of the impact and plops hard down to something not half as rigid as the ground he expected.

Opening one of his closed eyes as he holds Hans close in his arms, wrapped around to cushion the fainted boy's fall, Eugene sees the last two evacuating flunkies already bundled together with the other four already captured. With a pretty bow on top the foul bunch of lackeys, Killer and Bruiser high-five their creative hands together in justified delight over them.

The motley crew of Snuggly Duckling pub thugs had all assembled to come and bail out this captured duo from an untimely demise after Big Nose and his new wife had made a call to arms for his thuggish comrades.

"You fellas sure got here just in time. Thanks for the rescue." Eugene groans, even the unmentionable parts of him now sore, due to his leg spread 'soft' landing.

But the pub thugs' welcomed mugs scattered all around the abandoned tannery weren't the only surprise ones gathered here.

In a dazed bout of staving off tears of grateful dizziness, Eugene's eyes flutter open to feel the warm breath of a heavily breathing horse whinnying right in his nearly passed out face.

"WHINNY! WHINNY!" Maximus, the proud Percheron horse, the chief Royal guard steed of Corona gives his, as always, companionably friendly snort to his arch nemesis/forever pursuit pal Flynn Rider.

"Max? Max, is that you? Are you a sight for sore eyes! What you doing here? I'm…touched that you care. Genuinely touched that we have finally overcome our misunderstanding." Waxing poetic, Eugene, in his phrased lightheadedness, opens one eye to murmur through his immense aches and pains to the extra large equine whom he had had this love/hate relationship with for years.

It was the strong, proud equestrian who had plowed a horse shaped hole in through the back wall to gain entry for the rescuers.

Thinking himself and his lil' bro goners, for real this time, in his woozy mind, Eugene didn't see this unexpected rescue coming. So, even the angry-eyed, white Percheron with the blonde wild mane and flipping tail was a welcome sight.

"Because the King and Queen were concerned about your safety when they heard you got yourself in trouble again, Rider. God knows why." Corona's sullen Captain of the Guard, on the other hand, was not.

The Prussian Captain of the Guard, Maximus' master – _or was that the other way around_? – marches up to stand at his full six foot three, full-bodied height to glower and glare down at Flynn after Maximus lowers his backside for the thief and Hans, still embarrassingly entangled intimately in Flynn's arms, to slide off to the splintery floor of the tanning mill.

"Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence, Schmidt. I missed you, too." Impertinent not to give the pompous man his due title, Eugene responds from where he was smooshed on his cheek to the floor at the feet of the unsympathetic pair of man and horse sneering down at him, causing Maximus to burst out in horsey chuckles.

Leaning his head back to the hard floor, Eugene allows himself to wallow in his pain, now that the immediate danger had passed and he was in – _ahem_ – amicable company.

"You doing okay, T'ief?" Coming up silently from behind Schmidt as the Captain of the Guard of Prussia and his justice loving horse leave chortling, to deal with the six violent lackeys accosted for kidnapping a Royal vassel – Prince Consort _Eugene_ of Prussia, a dark familiar face appears with a more pleasant smile down at Eugene.

Rushing up alongside Job, a thumbs-up Big Nose and clapping Hilde outside the mill's crashed in wall dismount the Snow Queen's white flying horses, Snaedis and Flurru, the pair of flying equines that Job and Big Nose had escaped the Svette Doight upon, days ago.

"Big Nose! Hilde! Job, old buddy! You made it! Ha ha! We knew we could count on you guys to get us back up! Here! Take the Kid over to Bruiser and Killer over there to make sure he's in decent enough condition after being put on a meat hook for an acid bath treatment. We've got one more mission to race to though before the Kid can retire. Rügen's still got his clutches around your Pops, Big Nose. Sorry, we couldn't stop him." Eugene looks over at Big Nose apologetically with the bad news as he relies on his big boned Caribbean friend to pry and lift Hans up from his brother's momentarily stuck in place, frozen-up embrace.

"Is Aged P hurt?" Big Nose asks in concern for his old father.

"Nah. Sideburns and I took the brunt of the torture from these nefarious morons." Eugene offers the good son a quick smile of reassurance.

"You're a real good mensch, Prince Eugene. Aged P would certainly thank you, no matter how this turns out." Romantic Big Nose felt the moving moment of their deepening friendship bond keenly as he leans down to give a spazzed out Eugene a friendly hug.

"Um, I've got some scars and bumps and bruises you won't believe, big fella. So pardon me if I skip our hug this time, BN." Flynn had had enough of male bonding this trip to last him a lifetime, leaving Big Nose to giggle nervously and thankfully, back away.

It didn't take long for garrulous Flynn Rider to regain his tongue as he swiftly then goes point for point on the urgency for them all to get moving. Even Eugene could be responsible when he put his mind to it.

"But we have to get going ASAP for Aged P's sake. He's set to attend some kangaroo court trial that royal slimeball Count Rügen has rigged against the old man." Eugene says, the look on his brow full of courage and determination. "Just as soon as I catch my breath." But all that heroic bluster was just a front for the fatigued soldier as Eugene closes his eyes and hangs his head back to the ground, this type of extreme adventure unfortunately increasingly becoming just a normal occurrence for him.

"You be lucky, T'ief." Job enigmatically says as he shifts Hans' lightly moaning body in his arms as he turns to go.

"Oh, yeah, it was nothing. This little scrape was just another day at the office for me and my Lillebror." His eyes closed tight, Eugene speaks with a smile full of bravado etched on his handsome features as he announces this in his flippant way. He tries to give Job a cocky wink, but even his face muscles hurt.

"Not for dat, T'ief. For da good family dat little gurl of yers gives ye." Job tosses the compliment over his shoulder as moves away with Hans. The sentiment hanging in the air was punctuated quite dramatically by the unexpected appearance of a special pair of individuals who enter the tannery mill whom Eugene was too busy chattering before to notice right off.

But the way everyone else was either lifting their helmet or bowing their heads, the once lonely thief might've figured out just who walked through the mill's now open front door.

"Yup, old Fritz and Arianna have taken a shine to this good-for-nothing orphan boy. Ha! I can't wait to see the looks on their faces when I tell them who my old Pops turned out to be…" The talkative thief dizzily drones on although his eyes were closed and unobservant.

Until a lovely woman wearing a long lavender dress and soft deep brown, grey streaked hair reaches her emerald green eyes to soak in the lost little boy with nothing but fondness.

"Oh, Eugene. We never have considered you a ' _good-for-nothing orphan'_. You're precious to Rapunzel, so you're precious to us. You're our family now, dear." Often times the tough, firm hand in the family, Queen Arianna, after traveling such a distance, just for him, now speaks with genuine emotion expressed for her embraced son-in-law.

Rushing over rushes in her elegant orchid and lavender purple gown with all the delicate golden brocade designs, the Royal Queen of Prussia kneels to the ground to crouch down to the floor to draw her laid out and injured son-in-law into a tender hug to her chest.

"Hi, Mommy." Delirious with relief to be wrapped in the safe warmth of the older woman who had indeed taken him into her family with open arms, Eugene groggily murmurs against Rapunzel's mother's warm chest.

Queen Arianna's caring motherly eyes smile down at her daughter's choice of husband as she embraces him close. Arianna was thankful, that all the Snuggly Duckling patrons and this new stranger named Job - who claimed to be Eugene and Rapunzel's new friend - had conveyed the danger Eugene was undertaking for the sake of another.

"Are you all right?" She rubs his back, unknowingly causing the scourged and whipped backside to sting.

"Owwy!" He stifles a scream with a sucked in air, bit lip.

"Oh, Friedrich!" The Queen shoots an anxiety filled look up to her just as concerned mate, as King Friedrich slowly strides into the abandoned textile factory to come to his wife's side.

"Such violence from these Danish hoodlums! I am glad we traveled this great distance across the sea to render aid. It was right of you to keep our Rapunzel out of this international mess and safely with her cousins back in Arendelle." The older, salt-and-pepper haired King of Corona commends his son-in-law for once in their lives as he joins his wife in a kneeled position. Even in all his regal pomp and golden sun medallion circumstance, the King was not too proud to come to his daughter's chosen Prince consort's side.

"Yes, _ahem_. We are both here for you now, son." To Eugene's utter surprise and wide eyes, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia himself had led the rescue party to save the erstwhile, once convicted criminal in his own kingdom in this commendable mission of mercy, even though the older, sickly gentleman had been laid up in bed for almost all of this past year.

"You guys care enough for me to personally come on the search? I am… beyond words…" The, at rare times, sentimental former sneak thief glances up at the full bearded graying hair, kingly patriarch of his wife's royal family and then over to his tender-eyed Queen.

"Of course, we care for the father of our grandchild's well-being, no matter how reckless he is to go on such a dangerous mission of mercy with no concern for yourself or the wife you may leave behind." Queen Arianna responds and reprimands as any devoted mother would in her child's best interest as the strict woman strokes Eugene's askew, dark brown hair back from his attractive brow, glad that he had not been lost her dear girl.

"There's a vote of confidence for you." Eugene murmurs under his breath at the unintentional harsh statement as he rises to sit up with the personal dash of cool water that belittled his self-worth.

"It's good to see you up and chipper again, Fritz." The irreverent orphaned lad who never learned respect on the streets stands to his full height under his own power to be at least nearly the same height as his intimidating father-in-law. Maybe not half the large bodied older man's girth, but who's counting inches?

"Yeah. I guess this month's long roller-coaster ride has proven that I'm not a 100% slipshod husband. We've gotta watch out for that girl, Arianna, especially now that she's…Woo-hoo." Flynn's eyes make coyly smug motions to go with the squirrelly sounds that befuddled the unaware King of Corona, in conjunction with his wife's perplexing words and retort.

"So Rapunzel has finally told you?" Her green eyes start to beam and Queen Arianna's worried brow wordlessly softens under her grey streaked brown hair features as she runs a hand through it. "I assured the girl that your vagueness of late was just a fleeting boyish phase." The mother was excited that the important news of her daughter had been finally shared between husband and wife at long last.

It was just Rapunzel's first-pregnancy jitters that doubted her lover. All young mothers go through that unconfident phase. _I remember myself the insecure feelings well indeed, my darling Friedrich, when that Princess Victoria came calling_ …

"Told him what, dear?" The King, who had been quite ill with his heart these past couple months, had not been informed of his only child's _'delicate condition'_ that would perhaps upset and exacerbate his weak heart's troubles further.

However, under Arianna's loving care and constant alertness in making changes to her food indulgent husband's diet, plus many gentle lullabies at night that seemed to still have some trace golden healing effect of a flower that once occupied her body, King Friedrich's health had improved greatly under his wife's tender supervision of his activities and dietary intake.

Arianna, as an authoritarian who had raised an independent and, at times, wild little sister since an early age herself, could be a tough sergeant-general when it came to eating healthy. And though Rapunzel ate quite a wide variety of vegetables and grains to supplement her health, her red-blooded beau Eugene Fitzherbert liked to order a thick juicy steak rather rare and plentiful without any trimmings of the helpful variety.

And Friedrich found himself enjoying a little more of that aspect of his son-in-law's company a bit too much.

Right now, her sweet faced, naïvely dear husband was about as in the dark about their daughter's secret condition as he could be. But any question as to his only child's Rapunzel's state of mind or body, caused the kind, older gentleman monarch worry and unnecessary palpitations.

"About her baby, dear." Queen Arianna decides to take the bull by the horns and dismissively pet away the wrinkle lines of Friedrich's forehead that congregated there between his thick gray-brown brows.

"A b-baby?! What baby?! Our grandchild?!" King Friedrich's illuminated eyes light up like a Christmas tree at the mere thought. In fact, he may have been even more excited here at the choice news than the baby's actual father, or any other normal grandpappy for this matter.

Perhaps, this was because, through this grandchild, he and his wife may be able to share the joys of raising a child that they were cruelly robbed of by an evil witch, a quarter century ago in their own dear offspring Rapunzel.

"Yes, Friedrich. Our palace will have the chance to hear the happy sounds of pitter pattering little feet, soon, at long last." With tears in her eyes reflected in his, Arianna lovingly strokes both of her elated husband's bearded cheeks that she holds in her pleased hands. Then the meticulous woman straightens his dark Navy blue long robe's fancy golden-embossed wide collar, if just to keep her excited digits busy.

"Speaking of feet… Do you think my Lillebror and I could hitch a ride on you, Max, old buddy? These malignant naval jerk's have whipped our poor beleaguered tootsies with a nasty cane, so walking has become a darn painful endeavor. Sorry for breaking up the tender moment, for you two old grans, Ari, but this trip to the great North and back has been one hell of a run for my Lillebror and I. Boy, have we been through pain's wringer! Have I got some hair-raising stories for you! And I've still got a bullet in me yet that I will probably take to my grave—courtesy of a Dutch pirate with a bad attitude."

"Where's your 'yet,' pretty boy?! Hee hee hee." Shorty, the wandering pub thug, leads the Snuggly Duckling guys in the tired old pun and they all share a chortle at Eugene over Big Nose and Hilde's silently grateful shoulders as they bolster either of Eugene's heroic sides on his way over to where Maximus and Captain Schmidt were rounding up the villainous sextet of Count Rügen's evil lackeys.

"Your… Lillebror? Is that not the Danish term for 'little brother'? Is this young man the same illustrious long lost brother of yours that Ms. Hilde, Mr. Big Nose and their friends were so very enthused about to rescue?" Queen Arianna puzzles aloud, exchanging a puzzled look with King Friedrich at the implication of Eugene being related to Denmark's Royal house in some way.

But her bewildered husband couldn't stop looking around to all the destruction his son-in-law had caused in this foreign land, unable to merge the thought of royal hereditary with the rascal rogue thief that Rapunzel brought home to them.

The shellshocked couple, amazed at all of these revelations, follows Eugene to stand before the bench area, sewing section in the opposite end of the tannery. There, quite at home amid the leather goods textile mill needleworks, Killer and Bruiser were giving a now wide-awake and shirtless Hans a quick check-up under his constant protests of it being unnecessary.

"Your Majesties! Please do forgive my unacceptably deplorable state of undress! I am but your humble servant." Bowing his head in reverence to the royal rulers of Prussia, Prince Hans, was still duly embarrassed to not be donning his stately attire to meet these royal monarchs of another country, nor able to kneel properly.

Queen Arianna looks Hans up and down with a critical, soon pleased eye.

The young Prince was quite fit, even though badly scarred and whipped on his backside. His thin yet muscular frame passed the Snuggly Duckling doctors' exam with flying colors.

Red-faced as his hair, Hans grabs back his navy blue Sjoforsvaret Kommander's Naval jacket from Killer, who had quickly stitched up the holes the battleworn naval jacket had survived, and starts to pull it back on, his head constantly bowed in reverence to the King and Queen.

"You needn't apologize, Prince Hans. Your health is of vital importance before any polite etiquette niceties. Your new friends from our quaint little Snuggly Duckling tavern, Mr. Hook Hand, Big Nose and the others, as well as Mr. Job - who is a very nice young man and apparent good friend of yours, Eugene – all spoke well of you and your bravery to spare little Miss Hilde, as well as the many heroic deeds that you accomplished up in Norway." Arianna says, assessing Hans' finer points from every angle. She had gleaned from the pub thugs and Job's hearsay that Eugene's little royal brother may have had some secret smoldering feelings for her young niece, Elsa, after he had been so heroic in the line of duty saving her country of Norway from some sea monster beast.

"Just 'Hans,' now, Your Majesty. And I am the fortunate one to count those fine gentlemen among my friends. I must extend to all of them and to you and your men my gratitude for their aid in our imperative dire circumstance under duress." Glancing around from face to face at the Snuggly Duckling gang gathered, Hans, as per usual, always had the right words to say –particularly in address to a lady.

 _Yes. You speak as well as you look. I can see why Elsa would find you attractive,_ ** _Prince_** _Hans._ The Prussian Queen smiles inwardly that her timid and withdrawn niece, whom she had not seen since she was a baby, may have found a love interest, despite her dearly departed parents' unfortunate absence to set up a proper and promising royal match for her.

 _If only Idun, my beloved sister, were still here to see it, I know she would be overjoyed at such a good-looking suitor and hero for her elder girl. Hmmm…I wonder if, by destiny, it_ ** _was he_** _that she had written me in future hopes about, but never named, lest her plans be dashed by that stuffy Agdar's protectiveness of Elsa…_

Though Arianna and her dear younger sister had not seen each other for a long time, they had written letters to one another quite often. Through those honest missives between sisters, Arianna became one of the only other people on earth trusted to know of King Agdar's icy secret. The secret that drove the King and Queen of Arendelle, after their elder daughter Elsa had exhibited the same inherited taboo magic powers, to close up the Norwegian kingdom to the public.

Poor Idun had gone through all those years of isolation to protect her gifted child from the shunning outside world, while Arianna had been nursing a broken heart for her own child lost to the world for years. She was gladdened that the close sisters, whose individual families had introduced so many problems, and so much love with the addition of children, had been finally able see each other just that one more, wonderfully tearful time at Rapunzel's wedding before fate took her dear little sister away on the trip back home...

Still broken-hearted, for her lost sibling rather than her missing, returned daughter now, Arianna was remembering and thinking of Elsa now and how she, as dutiful only aunt- who had waited far too long to intercede, with all her own issues of health concerns for her ailing husband - could be of any help now in her beloved sister Idun's place concerning advice on young men and romance for the motherless young woman at critical tender moments. After being reunited with her own Rapunzel, Queen Arianna had learned much about the subject of love.

"Please, Your Majesty. We don't have much time to explain, but it is of the utmost importance that we travel to Egeskov Castle as quickly as possible. The father of my new friend's welfare – daresay, his life – may hang in the balance in a mock trial about to take place there. And if I know Master Rügen well – and I believe me, I do – it will not be a fair hearing. Please, the accuser and his victim left hours ago to set up a kangaroo court that we must arrive as swiftly as possible to attend. And somehow convince my father… the King… that Count Rügen intends to lay unwarranted exculpatory punishment blame for perpetrating crimes squarely on Aged P's somewhat misdirected, but by no means, wicked shoulders, to subvert justice. Which, in Egeskov, is swift and harsh, as I am personally aware of." Hans, after meeting Big Nose's worried eyes with his own concerned ones, explains his urgency to the King and Queen of Prussia.

His eloquent words gain their pity for Big Nose's father's inadvertent crime so that they look to one another, then back to Hans, who cut quite a dashing figure indeed in his svelte Norwegian naval uniform of a high-ranking officer.

 _Impressive_ …

"Captain Schmidt." Amazed at all he was absorbing from where he was standing in his puffed sleeve striped purple and gold Middle Ages style robes, King Friedrich of Corona speaks directly to his most efficient officer of the court concerning these pertinent matters of safety and justice.

"Yes, Sir! Your Majesty!" The by the book, strict and stringent Captain of the Guard stands in salute of his ruler's direct order.

"Give your swiftest horse, Maximus, to…" He looks to Hans' uniform and epaulettes, noting the rank. " **Kommander** Hans and Prince Consort Eugene to ride in order to make the best time. The rest of you will continue by road with our carriages, carefully vigilant of these ruffians, and bring these prisoners to the Castle by tomorrow morning. Hopefully, by then we would have already been of some influence to King Herbert in our plea to spare one of our citizens from a harsh sentencing trial in this austere nation." King Friedrich wisely concludes their best plan of action, gaining some extra credit points from Eugene for how quickly the older gent acquiesced and supported his and Hans' urgent request.

"Mr. Big Nose, My Queen and I will ride on those trio of flying horses as the rest of the entourage follow as quickly as possible in the carriage with the prisoners to present as evidence of the vile man's crimes." King Friedrich was really getting jazzed by this exciting escapade which his unorthodox son in law introduced them to.

"But, Friedrich – it may be too much for you –" Arianna protests for the sake of her mate's health.

"Come now, my love. I have been itching to try out one of these old girls since they arrived!, Now is our chance!" The older man pleads with that new-vehicle-want-to-kick-the-tires and test drive every model look in his eyes to his wife, who was ultimately his ruler.

"All right, Friedrich. If you promise to be careful and do no daredevil stunts. Your heart, remember?" Arianna caves, though sounding quite motherly to the older King.

 _Yup. Clock cuckoo._ Eugene considers the nutty banalities of his in-laws. _Lord love 'em._ Eugene vaguely muses as he watches his elder father-in-law help his wife mount one of the horses named Snaedis as he takes the other of the Snow Queen's mares, Flurru, under his great weight.

The King of Prussia gives Big Nose, who was already ready to go find his incarcerated dad mounted upon the third Snow Queen flying horse named Nýsnær, a nod.

" _'My kingdom for a horse! Onward and upward to rescue our brothers!'"_ King Friedrich was quoting pieces of memorized Shakespeare quotes as his undaunted northern horse takes flight. His undaunted Queen's flying horse soon follows, with Big Nose leaning his big bulbous nosed face down to give Hilde one last longing kiss farewell behind them, before taking up the royal pair's, at first, wobbly rear.

"You've got to be kidding me." Sardonic Eugene murmurs under his disbelieving breath at the ironically fantastic picture of fleeting youth and undying enthusiasm that the elderly King and Queen still had a taste for.

 _You two are priceless. God, I missed your old fogeys, Blondie!_

"I knew you were a great big softy at heart, old Fritz! Looks like there's still a lot of kick in you, old girl, too! The trick is to not look down, Ari! Don't let the old folks tumble off, BN!" Giving his daring father-in-law an impressed salute and his blood-drained, gripping on for dear life mother-in-law a wink, their experienced at flying horses son-in-law Eugene yells up his advice to the adventuresome older parents and to his Snuggly Duckling friend to watch out for the pair of crazies.

"Who are you calling _old_ , Mr. Fitzherbert?!" Queen Arianna braces herself on Snaedis' high soaring back with an indignant glare down at her daughter's saucy husband.

With a chuckle at his piquant, sharp tongued mother-in-law, and a responsible look to Big Nose to watch out the parents didn't fall off the trio of flying mares, Eugene, inspired by the older generation, ignores his own sore feet, sore legs, sore back, sore bum and everything in between to rise to the occasion one more time on his mount upon a rearing and ready to go Maximus.

"You ready to kick up some dust, Kid?" Flynn Rider shares a smirk with the full-of-it horse beneath him as he projects his voice behind him to the younger brother in the rear of the saddle, well aware of crazy Maximus' rapid acceleration capabilities.

Hans pauses and ponders, trading a sociable look with Maximus' turned head before answering.

"' _And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for_ _Sodom_ _and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. '"_ Mark 6:11

"Okay. That's a real mood lifter to get me motivated. You've sure got a way with words, Kid." And without further do, Maximus, whom Eugene long ago had tested for speed viability, whinnies loudly in proud defiance as he takes off in the northerly direction of this Funen Southern Isle. Through the town, racing towards the ultimate destination of Egeskov Castle, the pair of brothers courageously rise to face the trials awaiting them there.

 _"'Now, we go with contentment! Into liberty, and not to banishment! For something is rotten in the state of_ _Denmark_ _!'"_ Throwing himself to the role of wild adventurer thoroughly, King Friedrich, who swore by Shakespeare, could be heard continuing to boisterously spout his favorite Bard's lines in his enthusiasm to join in the adventure he refused to be left out of today, Big Nose chuckling nervously as he reaches out a helpful hand to steady the large bodied, off-balance King's mount.

"Be safe, Eugene." As her eyes gaze down over the skies she was following her lively King through upon the invisibly winged mares, Arianna watches the artful boy, who in some strange authenticity, had to become like a real son to her, begin his merciful race below at breakneck speed.

* * *

 **King Friedrich's Shakespearean quotes:**

 _'Something is rotten in the state of_ _Denmark_ _.'_ _Hamlet Act I, Scene IV_

 _'Now go we in contentment! To liberty, and not to banishment.'_ As You Like It (I, iii, 139-14)

 _'A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!_ ' Richard The Third Act 5, scene 4, 7–10

 _'O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!'_ Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167

* * *

 _Søværnet –_ _Royal Danish Navy_

 _Sjoforsvaret_ _\- Royal Norwegian Navy_

mensch – 'good friend' in Jewish

* * *

Birthday Greetings, Frozen friends! :)

' _Happy Birthday…to meee…_ " ^_^ (Just like Elsa, My big sis woke me up this morning, and I started singing the birthday ditty groggily like Anna in 'Frozen Fever'! Which the whole family watched, along with 'Tangled Ever After'. Now THAT was one heck of a wedding! Pascal & Maximus rocked the kingdom for those elusive rings!) ' _Now, who wants some cake?'_ I do, Eugene! Especially since it's an ICE CREAM CAKE! Right, Olaf? : (some dialogue between a delirious birthday girl and her beloved friendson the big screen:)

Okay! As promised, here is the first in a series of chapters I've got planned for this birthday week off that will ultimately lead to the climax of this Frozen Again Act V story arc!

I hope you enjoy it! It's really a long one! Please review this tale of meeting some old familiar faces and parental royal characters who just were itching to be included in the adventure!

"Clock cuckoo" as Flynn coined for his nutty in-laws, pretty much says it all for Rapunzel's pleasantly quixotic father King Fritz whose entire kingdom's old world Middle Ages clothing style and castle décor motif that are out of time with the rest of the Tangled movie make him a fun & kooky character to pen! And her lovely, yet bossy and domineering Mother Queen Arianna make some great new foils for me to play off Eugene and the others! Did you like them too?

And don't forget the irascible Captain of the Guard Schmidt and his faithful, high and mighty steed Maximus, who still just loves Eugene!

The Snuggly Duckling thugs make another appearance in a more action-packed way this round! I hope you enjoyed their hair-raising rescue of Hans and Eugene! ^_^ I thought they were hilarious as always!

Well, I must thank all of my dear friends in FanFiction world out there for making today a special day for me! With all your birthday well wishes in remembering lil ole me! I had a wondrous day filled with love and joy and my favorite passtime of WRITING!

And there's more where that came from, my Frozen friends!

Please stay tuned for more intrigue as it's all coming to a head! BOOM!

Thanks for reading and loving on this very blessed birthday gal!

Jesus loves you!

' _Let your light shine before all men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven.'_ Matthew 5:16 – HarukaKou's life's verse to live by.

God bless!

Haruka

P.S. The title of this chapter is actually a quote from the legendary William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. I thought, between King Friedrich's fondness for the Bard and Denmark being our new setting, it fit in pretty well. The inner meaning of the line from Hamlet is more of a corruption in politics statement we can allconnect with, than an actual complaint of an item decayed in the beautiful country of the Danes, where Hamlet has its royal setting. Pretty good stuff, that Shakespeare!


	16. Chapter 16 - Someday My Prince Will Come

_Sorry for doing this again, Fanfiction friends! But I forgot to put in a flashback part_ _between baby Hans and his foal meeting that I had written earlier and felt it fit right into the storyline here! I put it in the right place now, near the bottom of this page, if you already read the chapter since last night when I put it up, please re-read the end part. Gomen nasai! Thanks again and Please review!_

 _We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 16**

 **"Someday My Prince Will Come"**

From singing rounds with the younger girls, chatting like a friend to the older girls, or tickling tummies like a playmate with the toddlers, Princess Anna had enjoyed being around all of those Danish kids so much that she had almost forgotten that every one of the, by now, smiley faces were related to Mr. Hans Westergaard.

But that was the whole point of her and Kristoff and Rapunzel coming here.

 _To find Hans, right?_

A personable, effervescent young girl by nature, Princess Anna, after her thirteen years in virtual isolation, discovered her love for the children of Arendelle and they returned affection for her bright and sunshiny disposition.

Something in the orangey, caramel haired laughing and singing and joking twenty-one-year-old Princess' boisterous and friendly open attitude was a virtual magnet for little girls. Perhaps the little ones could sense sweet Anna would always have the heart of a child beating within her along with an irrepressible joy for life that could never be snuffed out.

So Anna had enjoyed hours of singing her favorite church and folk songs, drawing pictures of her modest, hunky Kristoff standing as an embarrassed model, and playing in the dollhouse with each child in charge of making up the life story of the one spirited 'doll' who had a new personality each time she companionably changed hands.

When she had gained the children's friendship and trust, after learning each and every name by heart _,_ it was then time that Anna asked them about their Uncle Hans.

A great deal of the children had never even met their youngest uncle. His life at the Fattigskole orphanage, his endless naval tour of duty, and shunned disregard by almost every one of their fathers, made the undesirable young man difficult to ever get to know.

The older teenagers knew a little about their estranged young uncle's dishonorable disownment, but were never allowed to speak of the taboo subject before. From how the older girls, almost Anna's age, presented whatever scurrilous information they had gleaned here and there, based on passed on gossip, the truth of Hans Westergaard's unsavory incident in Norway involving its mysterious Queen was almost unrecognizable.

Until finally, it had been transformed into something far worse and scandalous than it actually was.

Anna had to pinch herself and tactfully clamp a hand over her mouth to stop herself from either screaming, laughing or correcting the teenaged eldest daughters of Crown Prince Kaleb, Prince Anders, and Prince Lars' over-the-top misinformation.

 _They think Hans, whose 'pure' mind had already been possessed by a mermaid sorceress years ago during his voyages at sea, poisoned their fathers, just so he could be the sole representative of the Southern Isles left standing fit to serve at Elsa's Coronation? Huh? Hmmm…_

Pondering to herself this sensational spun story's validity, Anna considered this first bit of information before absorbing the rest that the inventive girls had in store for her about this fascinating black sheep of the family.

Then, once he arrived in Arendelle, their erstwhile Don Juan relation had danced and courted his charming way into bewitching the Queen's little sister Princess into accepting his engagement just so he could get close to the royal Queen.

 _(That part's partly true.)_

A desperate Prince Hans then had made a deal with a troll elder to take over and usurp the Queen's crown by cursing the newly styled ruler with enchanted magic ice powers. Jealous of her sister having a suitor, the Ice Queen then furiously unleashed on Hans and her traitorous sibling an eternal winter that affected all of Norway.

 _(That did_ ** _not_** _happen that way, at all!)_

The young Norske Queen's mystic ice energies went out of control so Uncle Hans had to chase the poor frightened Ice Queen into a beautiful ice fortress she built, slaying a terrifying snow monster and capturing the Queen after entrancing her with his debonair charms.

 _(Where do you girls get this crazy stuff from?! Penny store Romance novels?!)_

Then, overcome with irresistible desire, Prince Hans ravished her on his horse on the way down the solitary mountain and forced his attentions on her when she was in the Palace dungeon at the handsome man's mercy until the Queen had fallen madly in love with him, when Hans swore he loved only her.

 _(Now this is just swooning, torrid soap opera fangirl fiction!)_

The Queen of Arendelle wanted to marry Prince Hans, lest she be shamed. But the betrayed younger princess, who had been kidnapped by a mountain man friend of the trolls until she escaped, returned to marry Hans and heard about the engagement. The princess then tried to kill herself over the man she and her sister both were vying over and who both truly loved.

 _(I would never kill myself for the likes of him! I was over that redheaded jerk like twenty minutes into the drama, already! And the troll wedding wasn't like that! Kristly didn't kidnap me! The trolls just wanted to marry their fixer upper off to anybody!)_

At the last minute, the brave Ice Queen gave up Prince Hans' love in trade for a renewed closeness with her only sister again. The power of their true sisterly love stopped the eternal winter. But the Ice Queen was forced to banish the derisive Prince from her land, never to return, so that she and her sister could to try to make amends with one another and start over.

 _(_ ** _IT DID NOT HAPPEN THAT WAY! I WAS THERE!_** _What kind of dishonest media spread these lies to these poor, sheltered kids?!)_

It had pained outspoken Anna not to deny these nonsensical indictments concerning herself, Elsa and that Hans, not to mention Kristoff and the trolls, but she felt she must.

Before Anna had the chance to dispute this farcical false narrative, another imaginative twelve-year-old girl then even came up with some outlandish tale of Prince Hans being involved with some fanciful mermaid sorceress' scheme to overthrow all of humanity, starting with Arendelle. Legends of merpeople were quite popular in Denmark's land of whimsical mermaid myths.

One after another, so many scenarios had been laid out before Anna concerning their uncle Prince Hans from this large group of over twenty young ladies and little girls sitting in a huddle around her. All offered their inventive, almost comical tales of their charming and handsome, yet dishonored relation she had asked about like it was some fun campfire get-together.

The impressionable young females of the Westergaard clan seemed to be enamored with their young and dashing princely uncle whom some had only glimpsed from afar. Prince Hans was none too far removed from many of them in years to not be admired for his daring feats in their immature hearts.

It was as if they all were trying to make their obloquy in humiliation Uncle Prince Hans an urbane Robin Hood type of stigmatized figure in infamy in the starry eyed minds of these young royal children. They, as a whole, fancifully empathized with the romantic outcast of the family whom it was illegal to mention or speak of by their fathers' disparaging vituperations about the unwanted pariah of the House of Egeskov.

In the light of reality, Hans wasn't half as villainous, nor a modicum of how heroic they made him out to be in their far out extraordinary yarns, gleaned from the rumor mills of Denmark. There, gossip seemed to have been supplemented as far more sordid excitement than it occurred.

 _There were_ ** _no_** _sorcerers_ ** _or_** _mermaids involved. The trolls were_ ** _nice_** _, Kristoff_ ** _was_** _utterly good, and I_ ** _did not_** _plot anything against Elsa with that redheaded rogue!_

 _And he and Elsa certainly didn't… He wouldn't_ ** _dare_** _!_

Anna's indignantly racing mind at all the allegations as to the supposed extent of _gentleman_ Prince Hans of the Southern Isles' crimes, was surprising herself for defending her on-again/off-again, once mortal enemy for the very reasons she first despised him.

"You girls are really fantastical in your whimsies about your renowned Prince of an uncle! I thought I was bad! You're really pulling my leg about your valiantly heroic, misunderstood Uncle Hans, aren't you?" Anna had concluded when the quintet of talkative, twinkling eyed teenagers exploded into conspiring giggles at her expense.

With a resigned smile on her face for the rigors of babysitting, Anna sighs, no closer to finding any information about Hans, but, after their intense conversation, she was pleased to have met his spirited young nieces nonetheless.

As night was falling and the stuffy old nanny came to collect the girls, young and old, who almost unanimously counted ' _Annie the singer'_ as one of their favorite new friends and confidante, lively Anna was sad to see them go.

But as she was waving farewell to the last set of twin stragglers and spoiled, arms stretched out Petunia with an extra goodbye hug, smiling Anna noticed that her Kristoff was partway leaning out over the high window.

Her musclebound man was standing atop several stacked crates to reach the window ledge in the rear section of the Ladegården stable complex.

The energetic carrot top races through the empty stadium, making a sprightly beeline towards Kristoff, after tripping on a rolling piece of chalk that one of the art-ful younger children must've dropped earlier.

Feeling quite playful after the thrills and spills of an attention-grabbing storytime, the Arendelle girl's full ginger spirit skitters and slides her along the polished hardwood floors of this fancy converted barn/stable of the Westergaards. Once there, undaunted Anna was able to crawl up alongside his strained tendons, all in silent giggles to—

 ** _SL-LAAPP!_**

With a stifled giggle of delight, the young newlywed girl gives her new hubby's tight rump a resounding slap on the lower half of him that was not stretched out the high side window.

"Whoa!" Kristoff almost turns inside-out from where he was precariously standing on two stacked high wooden crates that he had easily climbed earlier when his heightened senses kicked into gear. Alerted to Sven's arrival outside, Kristoff was half afraid that he had been caught chatting with his reindeer pals outside the Ladegården converted stable gymnasium, and half in fear that one of those flirtatious teens giving him goo-goo eyes all afternoon had returned to be a royal pain in the butt.

Literally.

"Anna!" The blond Ice Harvester was both relieved and annoyed at his sneaky tease of a little wife for scaring him like that.

"What?! The guilty girl's broad smile smirks quirkily up at her peeved best friend/lover.

"Who're you talking to?" The gutsy girl instantly ascends to climb up on Kristoff's sturdy back, so she could to peer out over his shoulder at the stadium's high left window, too.

Pascal, who was seated on the window's ledge, blinks his pair of independently mobile eyes, off time, at the orangey-caramel head unexpectedly bobbing up at the open window frame that Anna had pushed and shoved her way past Kristoff to get a gander, too. Squishing her head right over her rugged mountain man' strong shoulder and sticking her nose in, Anna's big eyes widen.

"Ooh, Pascal! It's you! What's up?! Where's cousin Rapunzel? Hi, Sven! Hi Svala!" Energetic Anna quizzes the calm chameleon as she struggles her little body to stick out of the window more so she could wave back at her pair of reindeer pals standing several tens of feet down below outside.

Fortunately, Kristoff had one of his arms already gripped around his Feistypants to keep her from tumbling out a high open window that she was precariously leaning from with abandon. He tugs Anna back inside.

Pascal then goes through a series of mimes and gestures as he desperately tries to explain that Rapunzel decided to stay the night at Egeskov, even if she didn't find Hans there yet, because she was still waiting to meet his father.

After wordlessly studying the green lizard's scripted movements about the mannerisms of people, a sickly Rapunzel and some actions concerning her choice of eating dinner, Anna assuredly comes to her own conclusions,

"After meeting a load of Royal hoity-toities, Cousin Rapunzel wanted to stay for dinner but they wouldn't feed her anything except for… Huh?…A Russian dog? Ewww! These Danes really are a gross bunch of sickies! No wonder Hans turned out to be such a jerk!" Anna was just about the most terrible player at the game of charades, as her nutty imagination takes a weird angle on the inner meaning behind the chameleon's head and body gesticulations.

Pascal slaps a clawed hand to his frustrated shaking head at Anna's total misreading of his mimes and Kristoff rolls his eyes with an exhaled sigh as he returns to the vital subject that the trio of animal pals was trying to convey to him.

{"Pascal? Can you hear me, little guy?"} The Wind Whisperer in Kristoff Bjorgman turns to his one-with-nature psychic side for support and clarification as he directs his questioning gaze down to Rapunzel's chameleon sidekick.

{"Yes-ss. I can hear you, SS-Snow Prince Kris-sstoff. Wow. This-ss is-ss different." In a sizzling sticky-tongued, high ranged voice of his communicated thought, Pascal's untapped mental senses cause the lifelong mute chameleon to fluctuate between a variety of fascinated colors with every projected word, as this was a new experience for him.

{"Welcome to my world, pal. _I'm_ still getting used to hearing Sven's wonky voice in my head all the time."} Kristoff responds with a disarming chuckle, his mentally eavesdropping closest buddy reindeer pal groaning up at him in protest of the tease the mountain man knew his reindeer would hear.

{"So what's your message, Pascal?"} Snow Prince Kristoff asks the just returned to his normal shade of light green chameleon on the window ledge just mere inches away from his face.

{"Well…"} Pascal clears his little reptilian throat before his psychic conversation commences, doing his best to stifle the demanding hisses in his sticky tongue dialog's tone.

{"Rapunzel told me to tell you not to worry she'll be staying over for dinner, and maybe even the night in Egeskov Castle with the Princesses whom she has made quick friends with already. She wants to ask more about Kommander Westergaard of them even though none of the royals seem to know or wish to tell much about his-ss current whereabouts."} The once silent lizard was surprisingly quite intelligently verbose as his squeaky shrill tone spits this rapidfire paragraph out with virtually no punctuation, that almost makes Kristoff's mind go into overload.

{"Whoa whoa whoa. Little fella. Slow down. Now, are you saying that Rapunzel is going to stay the night in that Castle? Why? If Hans' own brothers and family don't know where to find him, why is she waiting in there?"} Kristoff was more the logical type than the sociable type when it came to visiting with anyone, especially royal folks who sat on their duffs all day swilling tea and wine while they hobnobbed.

 _Definitely not my cup of akvavit…_

Kristoff had already endured through enough of Arendelle Castle Royal Christmas parties and church social gatherings for the past two years to be ogled or shamed by the patrons of the visiting Royal Society there. Too many times he held back that cringed taste in his mouth at the thought of mingling in the haughty, 'quality' culture. Kristoff still preferred the wild outdoors with his troll kin or mountain men camp.

You can take the man out of Nature, but you can never take the Nature out of the man.

"What's he saying?" Anna impatiently demands, shaking and blowing at Kristoff from where she was dangling on his neck, piggyback style, upon their precarious perch of stacked boxes.

"Anna. Stop it. I can't focus when you do that." The young and virile, tall blonde man says casually to the playful young woman all over him. Her whispering, persuasive lips just touching his earlobe were causing a definite distraction. "You listen in, too." The Wind Whisperer opens his mind to her completely so Anna could share the psychic airways with his bride through their love's bond.

"Oh, cool." Anna was game for any new discovery that her Kristly was welcoming her into.

She closes her eyes tightly, following the soft sound of her Snow Prince's softly mellow tones in his mind's eye conversing with the small reptile.

"So, Pascal, tell me again. Why _is_ Cousin Rapunzel staying the night in Egeskov Castle?" Kristoff mentally asks the lizard in the high windowsill.

{"She wants to meet King Herbert and ask him about Kommander Hans, at the garden party for the King's birthday tomorrow."} Pascal responds through a telepathic thought-line in his quick paced, briskly expeditious tone.

"Hans' father?" Blowing Kristoff's fluffy mane of golden blond hair from her mouth, Anna whispers in his blonde waves of hair that were covering her face.

"You think the King would know where he is?" Anna didn't realize she was actually verbally speaking aloud in response to their mental communicado, until another more crass, crazily yelling voice interrupts her train of thought.

"There they are again! Invaders! Father! Captain Jorgenson! Somebody, anybody, come! We're being invaded again!" Prince Ruddi had been wandering his lazy gait through the Ladegården stable complex on his way to fetch his archery set that he was going to use to show off on the sun setting lawns his well honed skills with bow and arrow to his Maria. Rubbing at his sluggish eyes to make sure he wasn't dreaming, the stick-y up-py blonde haired half of a twin Prince panics when he spots the same pair of intruders he did a few days before.

Ruddi, on his own, with his twin partner strangely absent this evening, just happened to gaze up after gathering his archery gear to see that wild Valkyrie woman and her big brute of a warrior climbing into the stable complex quite suspiciously.

"Huh?" Surprised by Ruddi's earsplitting hollering, Anna moves back so suddenly that the crates she had squirreled up to see what her Kristoff was up to start to shiver and shake. Unable to keep her center of gravity, Anna begins to topple over, back down the dizzying height before Kristoff knew what was going on.

Amazing in his quick reaction time, the Ice Harvester instinctively grabs onto his klutzy wife, But the wriggling girl slips right out of her little yellow, aqua and green summery vest.

"Anna!" A freaked Kristoff screams out, terrified when he looks down to see the piece of flimsy clothing was the only thing left in his massive, otherwise empty hands.

Sven and Svala outside immediately shoot up into the air, but there was no entrance large enough for the two flying reindeer to render any feasible assistance to the quickly descending Princess.

But both of them peer in the window and watch Kristoff hurriedly scrambling down the crates. All were graciously relieved when they see Anna's plummeting form land right into the wiry arms of a just as shocked Prince Ruddi, knocking the clumsily assembled bow and quiver of arrows he was trying to get together right out of his panicking flustered hands to spill across the floor.

"Ohh!"

When a high-pitched feminine screen fills the auditorium that did not belong to Anna, nor Ruddi for that matter, both stare at one another, standing frozen in place, inquisitively stunned. The unfamiliar ginger girl was sitting shocked in this odd looking yellow stranger's arms. They each thought it the other who had let out that earsplitting screech from the loud proximity of the sound.

"Boshe moi! (oh, my God!)! You Danes are all cads! Just like my aunts said you were!" Princess Maria's thick Russian accent was filled with distraught tears as the eighteen-year-old visiting Princess had disobeyed her elder sister and snuck out of the room to have a romantic tryst with her own beau.

Prince Ruddi had slipped her a note secretly at the dinner party earlier, making an appointment for Maria to come watch him practice his archery skills in the Ladegården Stadium after the dinner hour concluded.

"But, Maria!" The startlingly spiked yellow hairdo of the second youngest Westergaard was matched by Prince Ruddi's disturbingly disturbed face. The younger twin with the homely mug gazes forlornly, just aware that his pretty Russian girlfriend had just as quickly backed out of the arena as she had swiftly run into it. But her slightly guilty, excited smiles had turned into slighted, devastated tears in between.

"Now look at what you've done, Valkyrie woman! You've hurt Maria's feelings!" Ruddi angrily blames Anna for his romantic woes, about to toss her unwanted body angrily down to the floor as he was stomping his troubled foot to the ground like a spoiled child.

"What I've done?! I can't help it if you scared me into falling off the roof with your yelling like that! It's not my fault your girl doesn't trust you enough to wait for the explanation." Anna's snappy untactful tongue is overheard by Kristoff, who was already on his way down to reclaim his feisty pants, cringing at her saucy, thankless words.

"What's going on here?! Prince Ruddi? What's all this? Report! Gardener Carl heard your caterwauling and alerted me!" Captain Jorgensen, Egeskov's Captain of the Guard, appears with his long rifle drawn and trained on Kristoff's quickly downward climbing form.

"Come slowly down to ground level, boy! Any false moves and I shoot." The Danish army Haeran trained Home Guard Defense Special Unit officer barks out the order to a grimacing Kristoff, who has no choice but to comply.

"I've captured the intruders." Ruddi says with a less triumphant, deflated tone than he planned, now that his sweet Maria had misunderstood the scene and had been distressed by it.

"They're the ones I was telling you about! Now everyone will have to believe me when I show them! So, who's the fool!? Oh… Whoops." Ruddi steps in a pail of sand that the children had been playing with earlier, his strangely shaped, elongated flat foot comically stuck in and shaking off the entrapment thereof.

"Who are you two?! What nation has sent you to invade our shores?!" The tough as nails, coldhearted Danish Armed Forces officer grabs Anna by her cheeks with one large hand while still keeping his firearm training on Kristoff with the other.

"And where's your _flying_ reindeer?" Prince Ruddi adds accusingly, sleepy eyes looking from Anna and Kristoff to the window where he could've sworn he saw some antler action above.

But Sven and Svala, at Kristoff's instant command, had fallen back from the window they had been anxiously peeking into.

"Answer me, girl!" Jorgensen squeezes Anna's red cheeks to force an answer out when the ginger girl with slitted, aggravated eyes refuses to respond, her lips sealed tight together in a defiant pucker.

"GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY WIFE!" The normally cool, collected, mellow tempered mountain man sees red as he ignores the firearm that was still aimed dangerously, directly at him.

 ** _LEAPP! TACCKKLLLE!_**

Kristoff uses gravity's momentum to leap several feet down from the high crate with a wide sprawling attack upon the trained gunman below.

The muscleman knocks Captain Jorgensen away from Anna, punching the Haeran qualified man away from his new bride until the pair of big men were rolling on the ground of the Ladegården Stadium in a harsh scuffle.

"Kristly!" Anna cries out in fright. "Ergh! Let go of me, you unsightly weirdo!" Anna elbows Ruddi in the gut as he doubles over in pain from where he was lifting the kicking and screaming girl from the ground.

Anna fearlessly dashes around wrestling pair of men to pick up the Captain of the Danish Guard's knocked away rifle. Without thinking twice, the lively girl locks and loads and aims the double barreled rifle threateningly at the big Danish soldier grappled on the ground with Kristoff.

"Back off from my guy, Mister!" She growls in a low resentful tone over him, her face all serious.

"Hey, Anna! Put that thing down! Elsa told me I was never to let you have a gun!" Like a reindeer in the headlights of Anna's target sight, Kristoff recalls his sister-in-law's instruction on their little trigger-happy girl's penchant for some wildly unorthodox shooting. So it wasn't exactly confidence building to be at the other end of his Annie Oakley's double-barrel.

"Hey, don't sweat it! I'm a pretty good shot, Kristly! Papa's statues just always got in the way…" Waving the weapon around as she and her new hubby have a little tiff as to her permission to arm herself or not, Anna did not notice that Prince Ruddi had called in for back up. The prince had dashed up and awakened the old head gardener, snoozing in the far corner bleachers who was supposed be monitoring the suspicious singing pair.

Old Carl the gardener rambles up behind Anna and with a strong arm, shakes her until the pointed rifle clatters to the ground, clamping a scarf around her mouth in a gag so she was unable to move or speak.

"Anna!" Kristoff is thrown off his game when he sees Anna captured. His head is whacked against the floor by Jorgensen who then uses the butt of the rifle to almost crack Kristoff's thick skull until he was rendered unconscious. Just then, the Captain of the Guard's soldiers run in.

"Take the prisoners down to the dungeon, men. They will stand immediate trial and _punishment_ in the morning for attempted invasion of this castle fortress. Hmmph." Savoring the word 'punishment', Captain Jorgensen flexes his battered and bruised fists, aching head and bashed jaw cheek that this rowdy, uncivilized Norske brute afflicted on him, despite special forces training that should have taken a mere civilian down in seconds.

"And make sure that the woman is gagged until you get her down into the furthest back cell, so that the harpie can't be heard by our honored guests attending the King's party tomorrow afternoon." Egeskov's Captain of the Guard gives his order to his fellow Haeran Danish army chosen task force, who assiduously bind and handcuff an unconscious Kristoff.

And then they move on to the kicking like a madwoman Anna.

Engaging the little firecracker all at once, the group of four soldiers is finally able to bind the feisty little girl's energetic legs until they are bound up like a mummy together. Then one brave soldier slings the gagged and bound Princess over his shoulder.

The other three hoist the passed-out Kristoff between them, the muscleman's unconscious form a little more cumbersome to carry, but they managed to work together and bring the pair down to the dungeon discreetly, despite the feisty young woman's constant wriggling in protest.

"We will bring these interlopers to justice before Prince Kaleb's magistrate early in the morning before the festivities begin."

 _Count Rügen's not the only one who could take care of the King's business in this castle._

The Captain of the Guard never had much love lost for the much too trusted, sniveling sycophant cousin of King Herbert, who strutted around Egeskov Estate like he owned the place.

And Rügen practically could claim that power, for all the vested interest the severe, yet ailing and elderly King entrusted to his manipulative plotting right hand man all these years.

{"Pascal! If you can still hear me! Go find Rapunzel in the castle and tell her that they're taking us down to the dungeon!"} Anna, not so dizzy or headstrong as she acted sometimes, in moments when she needed to be strong and astute, has the wherewithal to attempt to utilize the remaining seconds of her still open mind link with the chameleon to send out her plaintive message, before being dragged down in the inner recesses of the Southern Isles Castle's uninviting dungeon.

Sven and Svala were alerted to the danger inside earlier and the empathic reindeer team was already going crazy trying to plow through a rear wall to find an entrance into the well-built masonry stone and monk's brick structure when Kristoff's mental signature became thinly unstable amidst Anna's fright.

The two reindeer bashing their heads and already cracked antlers against the loosened wall, are stopped by Pascal, who had indeed picked up Anna's wavelengths focused at him.

 _Find Rapunzel!_ The single phrase was so focused in Pascal's mind that Sven, as close to Kristoff as he could be, had enough of that open mental link left to hear the chameleon and at last understand his thoughts. Sven leans down to give the leaping up chameleon a ride on his muzzle. Then Sven and Svala, the magic flying 'reindeers,' scale the dusky twilight sky in desperate search for the girl in the tower…

* * *

At the other end of the estate along the winding path of the sculpted hedge, beyond the tree obscured spire of the Lutheran chapel belonging to Egeskov, a lone woman had crossed the moat with her self created ice footbridge.

Elsa of Arendelle was not unaccustomed to walking quickly through secluded lonely pastures and scenes of nature, across fjords, through valleys, and up mountains untouched by humanity, all on her own.

She was not at all afraid of being in the falling darkness outside in an unfamiliar environment where she knew no one. In her imposed solitary childhood, Elsa was used to having no one else around. Maybe, now that she had enjoyed the pleasure of her sister's constant company for these past two fulfilling years, it was the loneliness she felt of being on a grand adventure with no one sharing in it that had Elsa on edge.

After all, up until she met Rapunzel a few moments ago, no one else had any clue she was even obscured in this foreign castle on this foreign soil of this foreign island nation in her impractical search for a man she's not even sure wants to see her again.

' _Nothing we do for love is impractical.'…_ Her dear cousin's wise words still echo in Elsa's disquieted mind.

 _Oh, Hans… What happened to that young man whose secret attic loft was dedicated to your ideal dream Princess? Why did you give up on her so easily when she was just about ready to let you into her lonely world?_

 _Did you really care for me? Or was that all just an illusionary dream of my own longing heart? A heart that yearns now for the warmth of love… Your love…_

 _What would have become of me if I had not met you?_

In the silent stillness of the quiet falling dusk's unfamiliar world, Elsa could allow herself to indulge in such flights of silly romantic fancy that she could never in the prosaic light of day.

Ah, the sweet memory of being held in Hans Westergaard's embrace still consumed her every fantasy no matter how hard she tried to forgo and forget it.

" _Hou_?" Marshmallow had gazed down at his Queen's blushing face with a sympathetic little moaned query as to her preoccupied, wistful state of being. The large, deep as snow beast had cocked his patient head quizzically when his own mistress arrived with her carpetbag full of naughty snowgies to return to him to hold as guard.

"I'm fine, Marshmallow. Just a bit tired from the excitement of the day. I've just discovered my cousin Rapunzel here and I have a sneaking feeling that Anna and Kristoff will be joining us, too. Then we'll all be leaving to continue down for Prussia again soon—where I should have gone straight to in the first place..." Patting the crouched ice spiked knee leg of the monstrously bulky snow creature, gaining support from his cool strength, Elsa sighs a resigned, regretfully crushed sigh. Her almost tearful eyes look off far beyond the thicket of trees into the distance before she intakes a deep breath.

"Now, you snowgies behave for Marshmallow, tonight. Stay put, and go to sleep. You hear me? I want all of you well rested. We have a big day tomorrow and will be leaving by the afternoon." Like a mother hen caring for her children, Elsa places an icy kiss on each of the three snowgies' foreheads and finally one to Marshmallow's snuggled down cheek leaned to his Ice Queen's feet. At her gifted icy hand's command, each of the bouncing trio of mischievous snowballs hop into Marshmallow's compartment cavity 'bedrooms' that Ice King Agdar refurbished Elsa's 'Snow Beast' with to be her helpful traveling companion/luggage storage unit/ fearsome bodyguard.

 _Papa… At least I have you and Mama, by the grace of God, and our kingdom to go back home and fill my empty days… And Anna's constant love and true friendship has been a blessing to my life. It's just_ …

Elsa's cheerless mind knew that she must leave in the morning this place of Hans' birth empty-handed. The young Queen of Arendelle basks in self-pity, though she knew she shouldn't.

Amid all the glad tidings and happy times together promised with her close-knit family, whole again, she recognized now that she would never again have the chance, like Anna had with Kristoff, to ever bring home a boy – _a man_ – who understood her, for all her failings and triumphs and strength and frailties – like Prince Hans did.

After all, Prince Hans was the catalyst in the beginning that caused her inner fear to strike out from her self-imposed prison so she could finally let it go. And then, at her Ice Palace, Hans was the only voice of reason that could reach her, and stop her from committing a sin so foul that she could never have forgiven herself for, surpassing her lashing out fear, to ' _not be the monster'_ everyone else believed her to be. She could ALWAYS hear his voice, and he was there again now, during moments when she needed him most as her courageous hero, come to life from storybook pages, on their own extraordinary journey.

It was as if Hans Westergaard had been beseeching her light to shine through his darkness and illuminate him within God's unfathomable abiding love and acceptance, to warm both of their frozen souls, bonded together by some irresistible force even before they had ever met. She felt, she knew, somehow their hearts had become one, despite the difficulties and obstacles they kept inadvertently throwing in each others' paths. No matter how far apart, nor separated, she still felt this.

And then…

… _What happened?_ _Is there no hope for me to have a partner in life like that, dear Lord? For one fleeting moment I believed… it was him. It could only be him. I feel that the promise we would meet was made long before we were even born. But just at the end of our tale, where our love story could perhaps start to begin… He left me, without a trace…_

Ashamed to have been so foolish in her girlish search, unbefitting a responsible regal Queen of her people, Elsa had come to the determination to take Rapunzel home to Corona without further search for Prince Hans Westergaard. Whether if he be in Prussia or not, Elsa would not shed one more tear and be a dutiful ruler of her nation once again. If she met him there, by chance, she would be courteous and polite and merely extend her mother's invitation for both he and Prince Eugene to come to Arendelle for the nation's Royal Chivalric Order awards ceremony, no matter if the younger Danish brother chose to attend or not.

On her way walking back towards her frozen footbridge across the moat, Elsa was so lost in her own uncertain thoughts that she was unaware of the rustling of footsteps in the early evening dusky hour until they were practically right upon her.

"Why the discordant expression on such a lovely face, dear Elsie? You look as if your whole world may shatter to a thousand pieces of _ice_ , should anyone… touch it…" The drippingly flirtatious tone of the silky male voice that penetrates Elsa's inward musings causes the young Queen to stop still in her hasty tracks back towards the castle and gasp in fear stricken surprise at the edge of the moat.

Her frightened gasp only deepens when Prince Didrik's elegantly gloved hand smoothes quite fluidly bold across Elsa's drawn cheek.

"Perhaps you require the comfort of a man's strong arms around you…" The devastatingly handsome man of thirty-nine years of age, Danish Royal Navy Kommander, senior grade, Didrik Westergaard had just taken a rough tongue lashing from his irate wife Antoinetta. He now was wandering the grounds, searching for some diverting amusement on the rebound. His romantic energies turn to this innocent pure girl now, to be nurtured out of the pain his heart was secretly living in all these years.

Prince Didrik may have been spoiled by the incredible good looks that he was born with. The charming coxcomb had used his winsome face and pleasing stature of a tall lean frame to his stylish advantage, especially with the opposite sex. The sixth in line Prince of Denmark had been a ladies' man since a very young age. His wife of over ten years, Princess Antonia of Spain may not have known of her dashing Prince's affinity for chasing young women when she first accepted his sweeping offer of his hand in matrimony, but during their argumentative, totally unsuitably matched marriage – for both Didrik and Antonia possessed vain, self satisfying personalities that often clashed – she had suffered through far too many of his flirtations and torrid affairs with servant girls that she must continuously sack from their Castle estate, than she cared to remember.

For Princess Antonia of Spain had never understood that Prince Didrik required more attention than the equally selfish royal woman was ever willing to give. After all, from her embittered point of view, she had already done her part, bearing him five children. It was no fault of hers that they were all girls. Princess Antoinetta could never accuse Prince Didrik of being an unkind father. In fact, all through their childhoods, he spoiled his girls with flowers and presents and toys, but he did keep nagging at his wife to give him a male heir to impress his coldhearted father, until it grew to be a sore spot wedged between the couple. Unable to meet his request, it made the Spanish beauty into a bitter woman.

The frustrated, browbeaten man had often turned to easier-to-please females for some tenderness when Antoinetta was in another one of her foul moods, giving him the cold shoulder that would last for months. It had been happening this entire trip and visit. The Spanish Princess was in quite a rotten demeanor for all the trouble and upheaval on this unwelcome journey to unpleasant Castle Egeskov.

But Didrik saw that feminine tenderness of spirit he craved for in Elsie the new maid's vulnerable, yearning eyes that intrigued him on more levels, until he wanted to uncover more of the platinum beauty. That curiosity made him follow her clandestine tracks outside at this strange dusky hour into the rear forestry of his Father's castle estate.

Though what the intelligent and quick, sophisticated man witnessed next, had astounded him entirely…

"I've seen those eyes many times before, Elsie. Where is the lover you're in search of? Is that whimsical hero why you're really here, Ice Enchantress?"" The Prince breathes out on the shivering neck of the young woman as he calls her by that perceptive mystical title. His unexpected words cause Elsa's crystal blue eyes to widen, quite startled.

"Perhaps it is I who can unlock your frozen secrets…" Attracted by her innocent beauty, the dark handlebar moustached dapper man pulls a dumbfounded Elsa close to him abruptly, halting her escape down her melting ice path across the moat. In an obvious display of his undeniable masculinity, delighting in the tease, Prince Didrik holds the doe-eyed and vulnerable female maidservant to him, smiling flippantly all the while.

"No! Please, sir! Don't come any closer. I don't want to hurt you…" Backing away from his unrelenting grip, the Ice Queen realizes that her awakened innate powers were starting to bubble to the surface with her fears, despite her best attempt to squelch them before she caused irrevocable damage.

And blow her cover entirely by alerting Marshmallow of her disturbed senses again this time.

She had to get away from this lecherous older brother where he had cornered her upon this side of the moat's shore, where her big, bad bodyguard was resting. Elsa had to take Didrik as far away from her dear snow friend's hidden sanctuary behind the chapel's tree-lined recesses, for his own good.

Elsa utilizes a limited amount of her cryokinetics to simply give the marauding gentleman a cold shouldered shove back. The focused frost sends Prince Didrik stumbling backwards as she gets away.

The liberated young woman blindly takes to her quick feet and races around Egeskov Castle's perimeter as fast as her long slender legs could run.

"Now I **must** find out exactly who you are, mystery girl with the touch of ice on your fingertips…" A dark foreboding look in his equally tenebrous eyes that were starting to put the fragmented ice shards together, Didrik is aroused by the challenge of such a rare, unique creature who dared to uncharacteristically deny this Casanova his wolfish pleasures.

 _Why have you graced us with your presence, Elsie? Or should I be calling you…Ice_ _Queen_ _Elsa? Can it really be?_

The unperturbed Prince straightens his dinner jacket and fluffs his frilly dusky pink tie, brushing off the verglas frost ice crystals that Elsa had coated over and thrust back his chest with a stimulated air. The fit and trim man, late in his prime, turns on his heel to give swift chase of this newest, most captivating conquest.

Circumventing the grounds on the other side of the moat, through the castle's swan and swirled cork shaped topiary bushes that lined the rear side path to the West of the Castle grounds, Elsa tries to make her way back to the main castle rear entrance. But the moat was in between where Prince Didrik was blocking her direct ice created foot path to the rear of this Renaissance water castle and he would see her in action for certain if she created more right in front of his observant eyes.

Like a fairy princess, ice dancer Elsa silhouetted against the moonless darkness, traces her elegant frozen heels in leaps and bounds over the large circular, well-maintained manicured plot of stylized scenic _fleur-de-lis_ topiary. Egeskov's careful caretaker, Carl, had made sure the famed gardens and greenery were in pristine, well preserved condition all year around to keep up King Herbert's demanded excellence and showmanship for his luxurious kingdom's prominence in European hierarchies.

The Ice Queen's heart was pounding so wildly that she confused it with the pulsating sound of definite thundering hooves of a powerful steed drawing closer down the gravel path that led into the Egeskov estate…

"I must say, I haven't had this much entertainment since Nettie locked me out of the manor! Come now, 'Elsie'! You can't hide forever!" By now laughing at the banality of the situation like he was a boy of seventeen again, Didrik was chasing the elegant young queen more out of harried curiosity now to discover her reason for visiting incognito than to molest her.

But a certain young man who had enough of the green-eyed protective monster in him still, despite his most penitent intentions, could not view this ladies' man Prince with a bad reputation as anything but, and would not let him off the hook so readily.

Amused by this merry chase with more fun than he's had in a long, long time, Prince Didrik just turns the high hedge on his way past the masonry stone edges of this prestigious renaissance castle that's been in his family for generations when a shadow looms close.

The smiling man is shocked to be squarely sucker-punched by a bare-knuckled assailant who seemed expert in the art of blind angle, knock-out pugilism and appeared, like a spectre, from out of no where, all at once.

 ** _PPU-UNNCCHH!_**

Didrik is unexpectedly floored by a forcefully delivered, devastating left hook that directly decked him right by his instantly red and swollen left eye socket.

"Don't touch my Lady!" The full throated, low growled voice that hisses out from the aggressor stands defiantly over his downed victim, causing Didrik to shake his rattled, blurred vision head from where he was lying in a stunned heap on the grassy knolls.

The guttural rage and indignant venom that accompanied the normally silky voice was unfamiliar, but something about the thin man's silhouette in his hazy, pain-filled view startles the sixth-in-line Prince of the Southern Isles. He gives a long stagnant gape at that fuzzy vague figure that, just as suddenly, is yanked away by another in the fallen dusk.

Didrik lies there, bewildered in this early August evening tide's thick sultry blackness that suited his starting to palpitate bruised eye.

"…Hans…? Queen Elsa is **_your_** lady…?..." The intelligent and clever, witty prince says in an awed whisper, just before he passes out in the oppressive heat encircling his woozy head that suffered from a mild concussion.

* * *

 ** _In the drive's frontage of Egekov, minutes before…_**

Like a white speeding bullet, Maximus the proud Percheron pompously struts his stuff. Perhaps the horse had some pure thoroughbred genes in him somewhere along the way, with his sire horse Saximus having more than his choice of fillies and mares, of every breed and variety that eccentric King Friedrich imported for his prized steed from all across the European continent and even into the Far East beyond.

"Head due east for one and a half kilometers, Maximus. Then at the sign post's crossway ease into a hairpin right turn at the tall oak hill rise, so we can circumvent the central roadway of the Kvarndrup village and make better time." Hans' smooth velvety voice speaks to Maximus directly. The Danish man had been at ease with equines since his youth, as he and the white large horse display, communicating perfectly with one another as if they had been traveling companions for a very long time.

"Backseat driver." Unlike Flynn Rider's estranged association with the palace horse, since his days as an outlaw of the kingdom, Eugene comments with a droll smile at how well Hans and Maximus were getting along.

 _Come on! He's a bad horse!_

Eugene recalls his own rocky relationship right off the bat with this non-simpatico, incompatible horsie with a bad attitude. But Maximus liked Hans right off, the redheaded princely Dane and the Captain of the Guard's Percheron steed hit it off instantly.

 _Why does everyone I've ever met like you and nobody ever likes me? I ask you!_ Flynn conjectures to himself about the iniquities in life about nobody caring to be around him.

 _What is it about me? My stunning good looks overwhelm them? Because I have minty fresh breath almost 24/7. I know. I check._

As the vain man even thinks descriptively off the beaten track, Eugene checks his own hot breath by exhaling a breathy huff into Maximus' spun around medallion in his own palm. Then he flicks back his stylish dark brown waves of hair framing his gorgeous face, always proud of his looks in the dusky sunset.

 _It's my best time of day._

Eugene comes up with a shrugged smile from his shiny white, regularly flossed, flawless teeth with the straight set of pearly whites a-gleam in the shining metal's reflection.

"Hee hee hee hee!" Letting the hill's leeward angle give his momentum run forward that extra bit of speed, Maximus, had an uncanny knack at catching Mr. Flynn Rider at his most embarrassing moments. The speeding horse snickers a snigger at his rival's coxcomb vanity to the stubbly thief in the front of his shared saddle of the brothers.

"Shut up, Max. Just get us onto those castle grounds in stealth mode for operation prison break. Savvy?" Eugene smacks the ridiculing horse on his neck in punishment for Maximus' jeering chortles and the big Percheron clasps his cackling mouth shut. The horse slows from his incredible thundering hoof pace to change into a sleek slither along the sides of the tall bamboo hedge row maze when the many spired stone castle rises upwards over the grassy Hill knoll's horizon to the east.

"I'll have you well know that every one of these 1131 hectares – let's see…2800 approximate acres – that you are traveling your dirt stained horseshoes upon, belong to my own sire, the King of Denmark. So how about a little extra respect for a lost Danish Prince?" The front rider of this racehorse leans down in undertones in his steed's ear, despite knowing that he had little or actually no rightful claim to even one centimeter of this kingdom. He felt the need to be a show off to this high and mighty, haughty snobbish horse who always looked down on Eugene's lowly, unclaimed birth.

Maximus shows his respect by razzling back at Flynn, the spittle of which splashes back in Eugene's arrogant, braggadocios face.

"Gee thanks, Max. I needed a quick shower just about now before my grand intro to the old family." Eugene wipes the horse slobber from his sourpuss as the quick stepping steed rushes along and hops over the tall hedges and gets a running jump over a long reflective stream that ran perpendicular to the grand estate house Max was kicking up grass and clovers in a race towards the east side of.

"If I know Count Rügen, which I unfortunately must profess to, I believe he will press Kaleb to set a trial against Aged P early in the morning before daybreak, despite the fact that it's the King's 70th birthday celebration and there will be many multinational dignitaries attending." Hans ponders aloud, speaking in a hushed tone amidst the quickly diminishing light of early dusk.

He was only nominally paying attention to his brother and horse buddy's comical antics and rivalry. "Your Prussian friend's father will either have been taken to the holding cells underneath the Ladegården stable complex, or brought down into the castle's dungeon to await sentence. Since time is of the essence, if we are to liberate him tonight, I suggest we split up to decipher which. You and Maximus can investigate the stable area with little attention since no one will recognize either of you. If approached, give pretense as footman to some visiting ambassador. I will surreptitiously use my experience of the castle structure's double inner hidden wall priest holes and secret passages to stake out the dungeon. I know something of its intricate secret entrances and exits." Hans explains the game plan swirling around his incisive strategic mind.

"When I was a boy, my older brothers always threatened to lock me up and throw away the key after they assured me there was a vicious man-eating demon monster whose spirit leaves the dungeon at night to devour little children who were bad. And I grew up with one after another of my Storbrors impressing upon me that I was born evil, and could never be anything but. It sounds foolish to admit it now, but when I was a very small child, I did fear that ghastly howling wolf I could hear outside my window every night, coming to climb up from the dungeon and devour me in my sleep."

"Ouch. Talk about scarred childhood memories. Nice big brothers we've got. Can't wait to meet them…" Eugene teases in his characteristic sarcasm and cynicism.

"Well… I don't know if that will be even feasible…" Hans, on one level of his mind was trying to contemplate where Count Rügen had most likely taken Big Nose's father; on another plane he was planning on how to approach the trial that would be headed by his oldest brother Kaleb as the ruling judge and sole jurist, to be handled in such a delicate, prudent manner as to have the case dismissed as frivolous or misconstrued; and on the third level he was scanning the area for some unknown variable his heart was telling his sixth gut sense that something imperative must be attended to immediately.

Something dear to his heart… Something so valued that was quite out of place here in this nightfall descending darkened castle of his birth…

… _Something precious that must be protected…_

"So our old man is turning seventy years old tomorrow? Whew whee! The old man's getting up there in years. Do you think he'll have a taste for your handsome shiny new present, Lillebror? It has a fine 33 year vintage…" Eugene says, referring to himself loosely in a stiffly smiled whisper as the trio near the still castle.

"I have been disowned by my Father, Storbror. He will not even deem to see me, a disgraced son, in his court." Hans responds with solemnity, his eyes shivering with emotion as they connect with Eugene's turned back ones over his shoulder.

"Quit being so uptight, Good-lookin! I'm just joking! Look. I know I'm not going to be welcomed in with banners and trumpets blowing in joy to greet me. But this may be _your_ chance though for a big come back into the fold. Maybe your Pops is in a glad mood 'cause its his birthday. Folks are generally in a more forgiving disposition on their own happy occasions." Eugene would never admit it, but he was getting a tad nervous himself to be so close to the man who abandoned him as a bastard child, not knowing how he'd react exactly to meet him anyway. He was surprisingly growing more tactful, perhaps from things he had picked up from hanging around Hans somewhere along the way.

"The prodigal son? I doubt that Father will slay the fatted calf for _my_ return, Storbror…" Hans' brilliant brain is able to answer in Biblical parable terms that Jesus spoke, to the outcast boy raised by nuns. Though the secular orphanage raised boy named Eugene may not have been so versed in didactic precepts as conventual Hans.

"Well, we'll be fine with just some sausages at the party. Man, can those street vendors in Corona makes some damn good brats! Right, Max? Oh, don't give me that uninterested _'I'm a vegetarian'_ look, horse! I've seen you and the frog mouthwatering when Rapunzel does a fry up for my breakfast at noon after we - _ahem_ \- sleep in. Oh, Blondie! Do I miss waking up on that first morning with you and the beautiful scent of bacon wafting through our honeymoon yacht…" Eugene's wandering mind fantasizes about his two favorite tastes in the world – _Blondie and bacon_ , _in that particular order_ – combined on an unforgettable honeymoon that they spent together as waves crashed gently against the small royal yacht on the shores of Corona. Eugene had not been paying any attention to Hans' amidst his drooling musings.

"Why are you slowing down, Max?" But Flynn does notice when the horse and its red headed rear rider appeared to have had some silent communication that Flynn was not privy to.

"What's up, kid?! Where are you going!?" Eugene stops his ramblings to turn to Hans and Maximus' wide back side only to find his younger daring brother had quite athletically leaped like an Olympic champion gymnast, off Maximus' saddle to abruptly make a dash towards Egeskov Castle's frontage.

"What the heck happened to the back door entrance element of surprise? Slip in and out like the wind, huh, Handsome?! Oh come on! What's gotten into you?! You're going to get us caught if you make a run out on the front lawn and step on that fancy royal grass –" Eugene starts to spaz out when he watches in dismay while Maximus he was still upon was galloping forward, to see Hans going in the opposite direction on foot.

"There's the Ladegården stable. A groomsman will lead you into the complex with no questions, as there are many visitors attending for the celebration and Maximus is properly decorated with his royal brass plaque phalera." Hans pauses mid stride to relate this information in a rushed whisper that makes Maximus puff up to display his golden royal medallion.

"Find a way to the Ladegården's secret holding cells in the upper wards to look for Aged P there, Storbror! I'll meet with you there shortly! There's something I just must check first…" His logical mind startled and confused by the inexplicable workings of his racing heart, Hans calls out in a low tone so as not be heard by anyone else. He races towards the side of the ornate fleur-de-lis entrance frontage of the elaborate castle as his tactical psyche begins to improvise their grand rescue plan for Aged P on his feet.

But Hans' every tingling sense was standing on end, reaching into the depths of his soul, that someone so dear needed him right at this moment.

"Oh! Hell! I hate when he does that! Don't have any crazy gung-ho kid brothers, Max. They only get you into a world of trouble. I have half a mind to let that screwball kid get himself out of his own messes this time!" Lodging his frustrated complaints in a whisper to his snorting horse beneath him, Eugene looks down to Maximus' thick raised eyebrow with a sullen face that told him everything.

Eugene sighs as both man and horse watch Hans sprint like a deer to make leaps and bounds like a slick fox across the stone piling bridge around the periphery of the still moat.

 ** _WHINNY! WHINNY! WHINNY!_** Maximus angrily pulls his neck in defiance of Eugene's direction.

"I'm kidding! Yeesh! Your bridle's on too tight! Follow that crazy kid, Max!" Eugene is about to turn back from the Ladegården that he and Maximus had just entered. Several stable hands were welcoming him in towards the impressive stable building complex where Hans had instructed them to search.

But that's when something—or someone— from the second story rafters inside the archstone gateway that led into the main section of the Ladegården, drops a thick canvas sheet down onto Flynn Ryder's unawares head where he was riding in atop Maximus.

"Hey! Who turned out the lights!?" Blinded by the dark canvas ambush, Eugene struggles to get out of the drop cloth but he is lassoed from several angles by many of those men who were waving towards him.

"They've got me! Bolt out of here, Max! Tell Hans to watch out! The jig's up! They know we're here!" But Eugene's warning, insisting the horse abandon him and go for help, comes a second too late. Maximus' thick neck is likewise quadruple lassoed by four more large men wearing dark hooded capes surrounding the incoming pair.

The incensed stallion rears up, pawing in the air wildly amid the shouting screams of men inside the stable. Maximus knocks back two or three men as the dark shaped and hooded minions of Count Rügen had been alerted to watch for these invaders and had been lying in wait in this horse stall section of the stable complex for them.

 ** _SHHKKTT! SHHKKT!_**

That's when a duo of tranquilizer darts that had enough sleep inducing juice in them to knockout the wild lions and tigers of Africa, hunted by the sons of this house on their foreign expeditions, almost instantaneously are plunged into Maximus' rearing rear hide and swiftly into Eugene's vulnerable exposed neck.

"Max? I told you that you already had one too many bottles of our favorite scotch…" Incoherently, Flynn murmurs in a tranquilizer induced drunken stupor. The overmedicated man's eyes roll into the back of his head. He then tips backward off the shivering back of Maximus' tense muscle spasms into a pile of stable hay that the unconscious man is quickly dragged away from by a trio of ready men.

 ** _WHINNY! NEIGH! WHINNY!_**

The massive, muscular white horse, with pure adrenaline, kicks against the oncoming streams of attackers and rears up on his powerful hind legs. His forelegs claw at the high ceiling upper wards where grain and hay are stored in the enormous barn. The thrashing Percheron horse makes such noises and violent protest that the lead lackey with the stun gun chooses to shoot another tranquilizer, this one designed to take down an elephant into the fiercely angry stallion, lest the large Percheron does any more damage to the kicked down stable stall walls they were attempting to corral him into.

 ** _Nei-eighh_** **…**

But when the effects of the double elephant gun tranquilizers start to surge into his bloodstream, even mighty Maximus could no longer fight the inevitable urge to sink to his knees to the hay-strewn ground in defeat.

Shaking his muzzy head, Maximus strains to keep conscious as his last earsplitting whinny rings throughout this long stable complex with a horsie cry for help. The vexed Percheron's final wrenched screech before he collapses reaches the pricked up ears of a golden-dun colored Fjord horse who had been complacently nibbling on a multitude of carrots and chocolate oatmeal cookies that his friends had spoiled the black and white maned horse with.

"Hmm? Whinny, whinny?" Sitron, the fjord horse cocks his head, hearing Maximus's last equine translated spoken plea in their mutual language of ' _Equinese'_ from where the friendly gold horse was merrily munching on his oatmeal cookies that Lukas had left him from Elsa, earlier.

The Queen of Arendelle had purposefully placed Sitron in an empty stall at the front equestrian section of the Ladegården stable complex. If Elsa was forced to leave quickly, her horse would be at the ready.

The unwanted horse, that no one save Hans ever considered intelligent enough to be worthy to be anything more than dogmeat, is able to use his nibbling teeth to slide open the latched door on his stall. Then Sitron kicks the door in just the opportune spot for it to fly open. Prince Hans' only childhood friend—the discarded scrawny horse the tiny boy had begged for to live— rushes forward to the long row of stable stalls that his was set apart from. This next row was filled with all kinds of foreign horses of the visiting envoys, and Sitron unflinchingly goes to ask if any of them had any idea who was crying out for help.

 ** _WHINNY!? WHINNY!?_**

In fluent Equinese, Sitron projects his equine voice to start asking each of the visiting horses in their various accented tones his question. But the foreign steeds were quite startled and just as curious to find out who was crying out for help so desperately to be of much assistance.

Sitron then peers around the corner to check if the coast was clear as he fortifies himself to face the next row of noble steeds.

That's when he spies a group of furtive dark cloaked men carry a dark canvas wrapped body form out through the connecting stone covered corridor between the stable house and Egeskov Castle.

Or maybe it was one of the small canoes that Prince Jurgen liked to bring along on the family camping trips that Sitron and Hans were never invited to? Sitron couldn't be sure as he ducks behind the large rack of grooming tools in order not to be spotted.

Prince Hans' lifelong horse companion may not have been the most brilliant of intellectual types of steeds, but what he lacked in brains and horse sense Sitron made up with undying loyalty to his boy.

So, if the once runty foal of the group of the distinguished fjord horse breed - that each of the royal inhabitants of the House of Egeskov required of their strong and tall and athletic steeds -had to face his former brethren in their proud, haughty stalls in the Ladegården stable that he too, like Hans, was shunned from, Sitron would do it.

"Whinny? Whinny!?" At first starting with a quiet, timid query, Sitron's questions from one snobbish, unconcerned horse in his decorated stall with competitive medals and personalized tack and gear all around him to the next. Each portentous and primped stallion among them was quite unconcerned to render even the smallest bit of assistance to the shunned runt of the family.

"Neigh! Neigh! Neigh!" One after another, eleven of the prized horses that belonged to the Westergaard brothers turn Sitron away with uppity faces or ridiculed sneers to the _equine non grata_ who was considered dumb and less cultured than any of the pampered steeds.

That is, until Prince Lars' horse, the oft unattended, fat, flabby and lazy, Socrates the fjord horse, lets his low whinny drawl out an answer to the frantically questioning, unlikely returned home, hero.

"Whinny…whinny…whinny." Socrates slothfully directs Sitron to the final row of stalls that weren't normally used for _live_ animals. It was where the stable workers kept gear and tackle and weaponry. And it also was the location where they put down horses who had been fatally injured or were past their use and made redundant.

Too many empty stalls in this eerily frightening section of the farthest back darkened corner of the Ladegården had been used for crypts of Egeskov's deceased equines until the knackers came to round up the dead bodies of the once proud stallions and mares to make them into paste or glue.

"Whinny!" Sitron gratefully gives a departing appreciative call out to the only brother who ever gave him the time of day. The horse with the golden coat races around one more bend of the massive stables.

He catches himself just in time until the coast was clear of humans who had all been scornful and angry for all the trouble and injuries the brute Percheron inflicted upon more than a few of them in his confinement.

And there, at the far end of Ladegården stable complex, Sitron discovers Maximus, quite unconscious and bleeding profusely from the lacerations across his white coat from being dragged. The work oxen that the men had kept ready to be attached to the overdosed Percheron to bring the massive heavyweight equestrian monster down to this dark dank stall in the far rear of the stables.

Worried, Sitron easily unlatches the stall door, listening in to Maximus' heart that was beating so slowly that the evil villains considered the overdosed horse beyond help and had counted for dead.

"Neigh! Neigh!" Sitron knew what it was like to be given up for dead and abused and experience the desolation of being uncared for by a single other soul in this cruel world. That is until a young boy with brave tears in his brilliant, empathic viridescent eyes for the forlorn and runty little foal that no one wanted, proved to Sitron the importance of never giving up on hope.

The fjord horse continually nudges with his smoky gray-charcoal nose muzzle against Maximus' limp and lifeless form, searching for any signs of life. Sitron is shocked when the Percheron, who had taken a double dose of tranquilizer darts to his system meant for tigers and elephants, lurches his involuntary twitching muscles and makes a shuddering breath of life.

"Neigh, neigh…Heyy...Whinny!"

{" _Tell Hans… Hans… Watch out_!"} Eugene's passed on, final concentrated thought still reverberates upon Maximus' Equinese translated brainwaves of one concerned brother for another.

The thought was so intense and distinct an urgent command that Sitron distinguishes it on Maximus' still woozy mind for both message and content.

 _My Hans is in danger?_ Sitron cocks his head again at the name of the boy whom he had not seen in over two years, but still loved more than anything in the world. If his Prince Hans needed to be warned of danger, Sitron would find a way, as memories of a horse and his boy in these very stables where they first met come flooding back...

* * *

 ** _Flashback to_** _ **the Ladegården stables**_ **,** **_May_** **_1830..._**

Four year old Hans Westergaard was a lonely boy who had little in life beyond a cold, unkind father and a dozen heartless older brothers. And when a new foal in the Ladegården stables was born a few weeks before his birthday, Hans felt an affination for the tiny little creature with the big sad eyes that glistened only to be loved, since its mother mare had fallen sick and died due to the foal's birth.

 _Sitron,_ the Danish word for 'lemon' given to the scrawny dun colored newborn Fjord horse, was what the other boys called this most recently birthed runt of the foaling season that needed so much attention from the caretakers, now that the week-old foal had no mother to care for him.

The nasty youths teased and taunted the unsure wobbly legged motherless baby foal for days until it was decided by a majority of the horrid boys, in a malicious vote, that this 'lemon' would be only fit to be sent to the knackers for mucilage glue.

And when the similarly dubbed 'runt' of the dozen Westergaard brothers put up a squalling opposition to their cruel torture of this littlest new horse in the stable he had befriended, they laughed and scoffed. But the red-faced, crying youngster who flung himself bodily in front of the horse being whipped would not concede defeat in defense of his besieged, vulnerable fellow creature.

'What's all this ruckus! Father's showing off the Ladegården to that Brit and discussing business with the caretaker around the corner! He'll hear you and you'll get in trouble - again! So quit that bawling, Squirrel! You're worse than my teething toddlers!" The oldest heir apparent of his siblings who had come for a visit to the stables, 26-year-old Kaleb, had scolded his smallest brother for putting up such a racket over a silly little horse.

"But, they want to put him down, Storbror! This little horse deserves a chance, too! I bet he'll get bigger and stronger if we feed and take care of him right! Please! Let me! I can do it! Please, let me have him for my birthday!" Hans had pleaded with every tactic he had, even throwing this special day in May in, even though no one else even wished him well on it thus far, beyond Father's kind Navy visitor.

"Fine, just shut your bawling mouth. If you want to take on the nuisance of it, **you** whip this knock-kneed worthless dun into shape! Father would never have let you have one of his prize Fjord steeds, anyway." Kaleb, in annoyed frustration, had flung the whip he grabbed from 14-year-old wild brother Franz spitefully at just-turned-four-years-old Hans' horrified feet. The eldest who had some pull then wiped his hands of the whole affair as he turned to leave and meet his stoic Father just exiting the Ladegården with his important guest.

"The homely, scrawny runt suits you perfect, Squirrel! Two lemons of worthless rubbish." 17-year-old brother Didrik, who always considered himself amusing, had called in jeering mock ridicule of both horse and boy.

"Happy birthday, Lemon!" The chorus of other bully brothers had cackled as a group of them grabbed Hans and tossed him into a dungy stack of hay, locking him into the furthest back tiny watering stall along with his runty new foal they had frightened to rustle back into.

"That's okay, Sitron. Don't let them bother you. At least we have each other." Burying his tear-streaked face into the warm muzzle of the pale gold/ tan blonde foal, birthday boy Hans didn't feel so tiny like he did in the presence of other big Fjord horses, because his Sitron was just his size as he hugs him tight.

Those treasured tender words and the memory of that fateful day still remained in the back of Sitron's grateful mind, that even after all these years he would always love his boy Hans for, no matter what anyone else may say about him...

* * *

Now, terrified for the safety of his best friend in the present, whom he had never forgotten the generosity of, the kindness of,all those years spent together, the brave fjord horse quickly leaves the stall where Maximus the huge stallion, his last energy spent, drops his spinning head back to being totally unconscious lying on the stable ground.

" _ **WHINNY!**_

Releasing a mighty rallying call that the other horses inside the stables understood clearly as a proud act of distinguished loyalty, Sitron races out into the darkening night in search of the boy turned man who never ceased to love him. So the foal turned stallion would never stop until he found his boy he loved again…

* * *

 ** _Back to the front of_** ** _Egeskov_** **_Castle_** ** _'s entrance…_**

Elsa was less in fear of Prince Didrik's unwanted advances than she was of her own powers exhibiting themselves in an unseemly, hazardous fashion at this precarious inopportune time and place. The trembling young woman shudders when she hears the terrible sound of a horse crying out in sheer pain and panic from the direction of the stables.

The sound of dread causes the young woman to pause in her mad dash into Egeskov Castle's front door entrance to look around startled.

The Ice Queen's already palpitating heart freezes still in its tracks, almost sure that she felt the sudden powerful presence of a certain someone who commanded her heart in such an unfathomable way that she had traveled hundreds of kilometers, taken on fractious tasks and embarked on a new career in the artifice of subterfuge just to see get the chance to meet his warm eyes again.

Her own cloudy eyes, in need of long-range spectacles especially to adjust to this murky twilight hour, strain to see just who exactly was disturbing her unsteady fluttering heart.

As Elsa was about to leave the cracked open front entrance doorway she was standing in, and bravely dare to confront Didrik, whom Elsa was almost certain she had glimpsed in the corner of her eye, stumble down backwards in her line of sight from this front portico angle.

The inquisitive young woman was just about to take to her feet around the corner story of the castle frontage so that she could get a better view, when a man's hand grasps her forearm forcibly from behind.

"What are you doing out here, foolish girl!? The service entrances are around the back! No mere household servants ever enter Egeskov through its front door! Go around the side! And look at you, running around in that flustered out of breath state with mud six inches high on the hem of your skirt! Disgraceful! Go get yourself cleaned up and be presentable in Egeskov, child!" Old Folmer the Butler had no compunction about turning the shivering, scared-eyed young woman back out into the dark without any further explanation.

As the grumpy old curmudgeon loudly slams the front double doors in her face, the Queen of Arendelle gives a sigh. Fortunately the elderly man had little sensation left in his fingertip grasp, for Elsa was doing her best to control her cryokinetics which were already at their stress level limit, despite his rough touch and harsh words.

But because of his interference, whatever the exciting scene that had taken place between Didrik and his mystery assailant, it was well over by the time the aged Butler had finished his rant and rave and released her arm.

Nonetheless, Elsa boldly rushes back around the side of the castle grounds where she thought she her may have heard a scuffle taking place in the night's darkness.

Once there, Elsa's probing eyes are greeted by nothing beyond Prince Didrik lying on the ground with a bewildered expression on his stunned face.

Standing against the shadow of the stone buildings, Elsa watches the man slowly stand to his unsteady feet and brush himself off, cradling his head as he skulks off towards the path that led into town, staggering down the gravel road listlessly.

Making sure the oddly contemplative prince did not see her, Elsa waits before tripping her heels in the vicinity where he previously lay. She was on her way towards the servant's entrance in the back that she had been instructed to enter the manor house through.

Elsa gazes around in the full darkness for any clue as to what strange event occurred between here and there in just the few short minutes time that so deflated the romantically frolicsome sixth-in-line prince into perplexed thoughtful somberness.

Presentiment informed her mind that she had missed witnessing something just now, intuition told her it was exciting, and her jittery heart assured her that she would have been thrilled to see it. Her big blue eyes, illuminated in the moonlight, search the grounds wildly until her alerted senses are aroused by the last wafts on the wind a certain unmistakable scent carried in the still night breeze to embrace her…

… _Hans? Was it you who rescued me…again?…You stopped him from chasing me? How can it be? And yet…_

For one dazzling glimmer of a moment, Elsa's pounding heart soars with the most fantasized dream of her favorite childhood stories – the one that had a handsome prince courageously swoop in and halt a lecherous attacker to rescue the purity of his lady fair – a fairytale that may have actually taken place.

Although there was no evidence beyond the injured Prince Didrik skulking away from the scene, that Elsa's own gallant Prince Charming had ever been present.

Save for that thick rich scent of Hans Westergaard's pervading cologne she chose out for him herself in that little shop along their journey, that was always a contradiction to her swirling senses…

With a hopeful dreamy smile she couldn't restrain from her lips, his scent filling her nostrils, Elsa strides through the moonlit night with a little more bounce in her step, her hands upon the folded piece of paper clutched in her breast pocket over her heart thumping with anticipation that indeed, maybe soon, someday her Prince would come back into her life…

And this time, she would **not** let him go.

* * *

The chapters are rolling in, folks!

So! As many of my dearest fanfiction friends and Frozen: Again fans widely requested :)

 ** _POWWW!_** Did lascivious Didrik get his, or what?! Hans the champion pugilist to the rescue! _**PUNCCHH!**_

Our Hanssome Prince and Queen Elsa are both dancing around one another, though they both seem to sense the other is near…

Elsa being chased by that Casanova brother Didrik was quite an interesting scenario. On one hand, she wasn't scared at all of the licentious skirtchaser, she confident in her ice capabilities by now enough to know she could freeze him out (in many colorful ways). But on the other hand, she didn't wish to hurt this philandering Prince brother of Hans, nor alert bodyguard Marshmallow and cause an inter-country incident with the giant Snow Beast's expected violent response.

And Sitron the horse finally got some airtime, too! He and Hans have a lot of backstory together to explore now when they meet again, after 2 years apart! ^_^

Maximus played a major role in this episode. I missed having around that stallion who can challenge Flynn Rider with such comical results! ^^ They play so well off one another! I love writing them!

 ** _WHINNY!_** Lots of equines were horsing around in this edition!

And a little FYI: the 'Brit' (that Kaleb so crudely referred to in the flashback sequence) of a visitor that King Herbert was entertaining at the Ladegarden stables while the boys were taunting poor little baby Hans and his foal Sitron, was a younger version of 'The Little Mermaid's' own Grimsby, Prince Eric's advisor/ right hand man in later years!

Now, as we move into 'Operation Prison Break', things are really heating up! So many questions…

Where have Kristanna been taken? Will Aged P stand trial in the morning? What's a tranquilized Eugene to do? How does Rapunzel have a role in all this mess? Will her parents on flying horseback and the Snuggly Duckling thugs, plus Corona palace guards get there in time to help? Will Elsa discover the answers she's been searching for here in Egeskov now at last?

And who grabbed Hans after his gallant rescue of his ladylove, anyway?

All of these questions and more may be answered in the next chapter of Act V in this ongoing saga of Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These Is Love"! I'm working out the kinks in my mind already, this mid-birthday week off! Stay tuned! Coming soon!

God bless and Happy Birthday tomorrow, my friend! ^_^

HarukaKou

* * *

Thanks for your patience and reading my Frozen Again tale! I thought the new part near the bottom half of the story after Sitron goes looking for Maximus, would fit in to put as this intro to Sitron of the bond between Hans and his faithful steed. This sad past story, 22 years ago of baby Hans and his foal meeting was way too sweet to leave out! Sorry for the confusion!

Love, your nutty writer,

Haruka


	17. Chapter 17 - A Whole New World

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Chapter 17**

 **Act V**

 **"A Whole** **New World** **"**

The sunsetting skies between the old tanning mill near the eastern seaboard side of the Danish town of Odense and the Crown's Castle of Egeskov in the Southern Isles were more beautiful and more breathtaking than Friedrich of Corona ever had imagined.

From the last vestiges of the day's sunlight performing an orchestra of its iridescent array of colorful hues and shining shimmering splendor, to the vastly fantastic new point of view of the landscape rolling by below, romanticist dreamer King Friedrich was in pure ecstasy.

"Look at how small the houses down there look, my blossom! See how tiny those Danish citizens on their horse and buggies are from way up here! _'O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world!_ '" ( _The Tempest Act 5, scene 1)_ Quoting Shakespeare, the 65-year-old man had spent far too many years cooped up in his scenic Prussian palace to not enjoy the sheer altitude of soaring about the skyline as if he were a kid again.

However, his more down to earth, prosaic wife, Queen Arianna, had a decidedly different outlook on this incredible magic horseback ride than her idealistic husband.

"I am trying **not** to look down, dear Friedrich." Arianna, on the other hand, was clutching to her horse's reins tightly as Snaedis, the Snow Queen's white mare, soars alongside her audacious man on Flurru. The Queen of Corona was a bit too prim and stiff, and longing for the reassuring feel of terra firma beneath her feet to find the same amount of pleasure in this highflying crazed venture as her King.

"Come now, my flower! It's wondrous to see the world below from God's viewpoint! Don't you dare close your eyes!" Romantic Friedrich was so keyed up in his quixotic element that the overweight King was daring enough to lean across the wide-open sky from his flying steed named Flurru to use both hands to gently remove Arianna's covered palms from over her frightened dizzy eyes.

 _"'Oh Lord, that lends me life. Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness_!' Henry VI scene i

"Hold on there, Your Majesty. Can't have you tumbling off. Prince Eugene told me to watch out for you." Fortunately for the exhilarated royal monarch, Big Nose was there upon the third flying white horse Nysnaer on the opposite side of the King to tug him back onto the steed's saddle. The euphoric ruler was unaware he was slowly sliding off from with his ' _look, no hands_!' maneuver where the trio were gliding hundreds of feet above the ground.

"Friedrich! Please, for heaven's sake, keep your weight centered and both your hands on the reins or you'll be part of that beautiful scenery down there!" Her green eyes wide, Arianna forgoes her own fright to show her concern for her love, as Arianna reaches a steadying hand out to strengthen his regal chest.

"I wasn't going to fall." The slightly insulted, miffed monarch remarks defiantly of their mollycoddling on either side of him. "Was I, old girl?" The Prussian King finds solace in snuggling his bearded face to his horse, Flurru's, silky white mane and neck.

The quirky salt and pepper grey haired King had instantly bonded with the calm, ethereal steed he was riding upon. Flurru whinnies back her reassurances that she would not have let him fall, despite the naysayers flanking him.

After all, Friedrich was King of all Prussia. And if he wished to travel by flying horse to meet Denmark's ruler, then so be it. No one could tell him 'no'.

"' _Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed_.' - (Henry VI, Act V scene ii) ' _And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven'_." Henri VI, Act V scene vii)

Murmuring under his breath – _a trait which his only daughter inherited_ \- Friedrich's soaring thoughts soon turn to his favorite bard's words of wisdom for moral support here.

Sensing her whimsical love's wandering poetic musings, Arianna is unable to help but smile at the nonsensical man whom she had fallen in love with all those years ago, who never really had changed.

The responsible one of them there and then decides to give her beloved this inscrutable glory and join in it. She could feel his yearning eyes beseeching her companionship and amity to make his special moment in the sun complete.

 _"'Come gentle night; come loving black-browed night. Give me my Romeo…and he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night..._ '" The serious minded Queen Arianna throws her fears and common sense both of the racing winds behind them as she too recites a bit of Shakespeare for her husband's benefit to complement her partner in life's before only dreamt of thrills.

As their eyes lock across the twilit airwaves with pure love, the two of them realize that they had seen many heartaches and sorrows in their time together. Now that Friedrich's health was blessedly renewed, their great love sustained through trial and tears, was now to be rewarded again in these precious times with the return of their daughter bringing the joys of a new family dynamic to come.

As soon as those men from the Snuggly Duckling Tavern had shown up on their palace doorstep, informing the Queen and royal Captain of the Guard Schmidt of their son-in-law Eugene Fitzherbert's heroic race to save one of their falsely accused citizens from unjust trials and persecution, recuperating King Friedrich had overheard from where he was just emerging from his sickbed room.

At the very call to arms from his son-in-law, King Friedrich sprang into action. The rusty at action King had had an interesting relationship these past five years of getting to know Rapunzel's charismatic thief and strangely coming to be fond of the common peasant boy whom his daughter Princess Rapunzel deemed worthy to love. If Eugene Fitzherbert had put himself in danger in defense of one of their citizens, his father-in-law wished to personally join in the rescue party as well.

Despite his wife's protests for his health, Friedrich could not be persuaded **not** to lend his royal hand to the proud effort for one of his innocent subjects.

And now he was even more gladdened that he did, rewarded to be on an awesome adventure, not only for the young, that he always felt he himself missed out on in his dutiful, held in reserve crown prince boyhood.

Arianna, proud of her husband's generosity and courage, had allowed him this journey for the sake of their dear daughter Rapunzel. The grey blonde streaked, brown haired older woman could still make out in the falling dusk surrounding them that bright smile spring to her Friedrich's pouty lips to have his love in commiseration with his new adventure in the dark of twilight evening they, upon their amazing flying horses, were quickly ensconced in.

"So which way to the Castle, my Liege? Shall we reach it before the dawn?" Queen Arianna puts herself into the spirit of the drama for her husband, whom she had been nursing from a deathly heart sickness for the past few months. She could see that ruddy health his garish face had recently lacked now returning to his cheeks, and curiously increase with each passing day on this lofty adventure that Friedrich's heart seemed to benefit from the stimulating exercise thereof. She could sense the world of good this mission's undertaking was doing for her weakened lord and master with just that inspired glimmer reflected in the impending moonlight in his bright eyes greedily drinking in the world around.

It was a whole new world that she wanted to share with him, now that they had this blessed chance again to live and love each other side-by-side, not in sickness, but in health. Wherever her dear husband wished to go now, since she had almost lost her dreamer, Arianna would be happy to let him be her wings, even if it was just the poetical nonsense he enjoyed dallying in.

The King of Corona pauses to scan the skyline, looking this way and that before he answered her query as to directions to Egeskov.

 _"To Northstar we ride with the wind at our backs. Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love"._ Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).

"I believe I have found a shortcut!" Confident, King Friedrich again quotes in Shakespeare as he leads his Queen and fellow romantic dreamer, loyal subject Big Nose, through the skies towards the northeast where Hamlet's Elsinore Castle was actually based upon Kronborg Castle in the far distance. The King's Shakespearean instinct led him in that skyward direction that neither Arianna nor Big Nose could differ with him, all of them foreigners in this land of divided waters.

The highflying King was making the unfortunate folly of taking a _shortcut_ , though that well-intentioned word most always only led to frustration and time delays on their way to assist the friends of their daughter, Rapunzel, and son-in-law, Eugene, here in Denmark.

* * *

Down at Egeskov Castle of the _Southern_ Isles, just a few miles to the south of the star-crossed Prussian King and Queen, the royal Banquet dinner had ended.

Exhausted Princess Marguerite had shown subtle signs of wishing to retire for the night. Her husband, Prince Ivers, was feeling particularly contrite this evening as he escorted her upstairs, opting out of cavorting with the guests to rather attend to his ailing wife.

His wife of eight years, Princess Marguerite of Orleans, had been a model wife at the dinner occasion. Despite not feeling very well herself, due to her most recent miscarriage, the tender-eyed blonde woman had joined the conversations, smiled to the foreign dignitaries and entertained as a proper Princess mate should at a royal formal dinner.

Vigilantly marveling at her in circumspect all night, Ivers could not help but note that Marguerite still looked as beautiful as that first day they met.

Their marriage had been arranged by his father and her dying one, who wished to unite their kingdoms by trade and treaty, and even more imperatively, to have the King of France's only daughter be cared for in his near absence.

It wasn't a bad match, all in all. Their good looks made them a handsome couple and their dispositions suited one another well enough. It was just the fact that Prince Ivers was a serious sort of chap who had been made well aware of his good looks and high-class breeding for years.

He had been the chosen son anticipated by his father, indeed groomed by his peers, as the optimum example of the clan Westergaard. With his fine deportment of proper manners and comely features, Ivers was the one apposite to marry young Queen Victoria of the powerful nation of Great Britain when she came of age.

The snobbish young prince, advised to keep himself unadulterated, had never been serious about any other of the batting eye socialite ladies of the court who often threw themselves at his handsome feet. But the abstemious young man was told he was to be reserved for a monarch.

Although, when that direct-in-line young lady had set her own royal cap for her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, it all changed. Ivers' father, King Herbert had urged his fourth son, who was getting up in years waiting for that certain, powerful young queen, at the ripe old age of 32, to finally settle down and marry the French princess, and at least secure Denmark's ties there.

Even if there would be no merging with their oft sparring partner of Great Britain, Prince Ivers at last would then be able to bear for his father the much desired possibility of a Westergaard grandson. Maybe he would be the one to have a male heir to perpetuate the proud Danish line that his older brothers had not yet fulfilled.

The thing is, all through his years spent in abeyance in hopes of a productive, nation-building alignment in a loveless arranged marriage, Ivers secretly harbored sentiments for a young chambermaid of the house of Egeskov since the days of his youth.

Sweet Daphne the maid's easy smile and contagious giggles at whatever the serious-minded, auburn haired Prince said made the happy, kind-eyed girl always someone, at the end of the day to be there for him. Daphne would always greet Prince Ivers with her genuine, honest friendliness after a long, hard day of staving off disingenuous, falsely insincere princesses with fraudulent flirtatious smiles up at him.

And that convivial friendship between the unlikely pair of the tall and slim, blue-eyed, handsome prince and the increasingly plump, dark-eyed chamber maid had remained just that, sweet and honest and platonic.

Until the night before his prearranged wedding.

On a dizzy night spent drinking and partying, cavorting with his none too abstinent brethren and other royal men attending the ceremony in the morning, stoic Prince Ivers had succumbed to the influence of the demon liquor. He allowed his previously untested drives to force himself upon his dear friend in Daphne the maid when she tried to help him to bed before the inebriated man hurt himself. But Daphne was much too fond of the stoic Prince to ever tell another living soul what transpired that night.

Everything after that went by in a whirlwind. Prince Ivers, upon waking up in a drunken hangover stupor the next morning with little memory of his activities the night before, had dutifully gone through the arranged marriage to the quiet and shy French princess named Marguerite, who was in mourning for her dear lost _Papere_. The newlywed couple soon thereafter embarked upon an extended, several month-long honeymoon tour of Europe to encourage their fondness for one another.

As for Daphne, she had turned to the Lutheran sisters of Odense in the charitable Convent of Noble Maidens who took her in during her time of need. The plump little maid had borne a healthy baby boy, who had the trademark of his father's brilliant blue eyes and his mother's deep brown hair. She and the child had lived in the Fattigskole convent for several weeks with only a few of the nuns there aware that the child's father was not one of the many soldiers streaming in and out from the recent theatre of war. The nuns there had seen a swell of their charitable services needed during the First Schlegswig _Trearskrigen_ (the Three Years War) military conflict between southern Denmark and northern Germany and Sweden in unrest that was fanned since the Napoleonic wars.

Soon, Prince Ivers had brought his new French bride home to visit his father after settling into one of the King's palaces. Fredensborg's elegant Baroque castle was bestowed to him as fourth in line Prince in that surrounding Duchy to the north of the country.

Daphne, whom Ivers personally had spoken many kind words to his new wife of his dear, dear friend whom he never thought as anything more, was asked, in an odd twist of fate, to be elevated to be Princess Marguerite's personal ladies' maid.

The increased salary to provide better for her infant baby boy was attractive to the single mom. But living side-by-side in close quarters with the very man who was the child's father, but ignorant of it as yet, was a tough bridge to cross. But Daphne would bear it with the smiled memory of the kind gentleman Prince Ivers had always been, previous to that final night.

Daphne took solace in the precious child he had given to her that could never be anything to the naïve, young servant girl, but a cherished gift.

She had kept her baby boy, whom the good sisters of the Fattigskole promised to house and care for in Daphne's absence, a secret from the world—and a secret from her new mistress, Princess Marguerite, most of all. That became especially important when the French princess exhibited signs of trouble in having any offspring of her own.

Daphne had come to love Marguerite's oft emotional, gentle spirit, with not a bit of the respect resentful rivalry that should have been erected between the pair. Simple Daphne loved Prince Ivers as a mere ideal, whereas Marguerite, upon first sight, had fallen deeply in love with her gentle voiced, serious husband whom her dying father himself had chosen and arranged to take care of her.

Both Marguerite and Ivers had come into this marriage late in life–past thirty years of age—and were set in their own ways.

But Prince Ivers, day by day, had grown more and more fond of the lovely Frenchwoman whose lonely dependent spirit and quiet feminine devotion made him slowly fall in love with her, just when the hardened, self-possessed man believed himself incapable of such a tender emotion.

The sensitive woman blamed herself and her years of infertility for driving them apart, though Prince Ivers truly never held it against her. Their marital strife was more stemmed from misunderstanding one another's unspoken emotional signals than anything else.

So now, as the forty-year-old auburn haired Prince with the reddish-brown soul patch and dignified moustache escorts his quiet elegant wife into their shared suite of rooms in Egeskov Castle, Ivers closes the door.

Marguerite, shy and reticent again now that they were no longer in the public eye, turns to enter her bedroom and closes the door behind her without ever meeting her husband's earnest eyes.

With the disappointed sigh that their relationship was still at these strained levels, despite his best efforts and smiles filled with hope for reconciliation on this trip, Ivers sits down on the settee in the front room to think.

And he is startled to find a boy with a pair of brilliant cerulean eyes gazing back at him there.

"Hello." The child who had been sitting there with hands folded neatly gives a friendly smile, just as Elsa instructed him to sit there and behave until Daphne returned, supposedly momentarily.

"Hello." Unsettled by the child's presence, Prince Ivers answers back, flabbergasted by the inexplicable visitor's calm boldness. "Are you… Supposed to be here? Perhaps… You have mistaken the room, young man? I think you _should not_ be here. Please leave." Prince Ivers was not especially compatible with children, he having none of his own to give him experience.

Although he was uncle to a multitude of young girls, Ivers merely had to be ostensibly polite to them, but nothing more. This was a different matter with a young boy entirely.

Besides, with her inability to bear children and her latest miscarriage eating away at Marguerite's mental psyche, it may not have been such good idea to have one just hanging around.

"Oh, no, Sir. Miss Elsie brought me here. She said that this is my Mama's room. And I should stay here until Mama comes back for me." The blue-eyed child with the unruly chestnut brown hair answers quite respectfully in that continued open, sociable friendly manner that Ivers found as disarming as it was peculiar.

"Who is this 'Miss Elsie?' And pray tell, who is your Mama, child?" His eyes reflecting the exact same shade of vivid medium blue, the serious Prince probes the inexplicable boy for further elucidation when Princess Marguerite walks back from the bedroom suite.

The blonde was preoccupied with removing her antique bronze filigree, blue crystal teardrop string Crucifix Lourdes Relic rosary as she wanders from the bedroom in search of her ladies' maid. The Princess was struggling with the clasp of her mother's prized necklace that was snagged in the white collar lace of her crimson velvet dress.

"Has Daphne come this way, Ivers? The clasp on this appears to be snagged." The blonde Frenchwoman asks her husband, whose turned back and wide shoulders obscured the small seven year old boy he was conversing with in the seat behind the door of the entrance room.

"That's my Mama! Hello again, Princess Marguerite." The sweet little boy bows his head politely to the lady entering the room as the handsome Prince quite congenially moves around the tall blonde woman to help unclasp her jammed necklace.

"Hmmm? Who is your mother, boy?" Looking over the French Princess' shoulder, Ivers had swiftly gone to wordlessly give his aid. The man was so preoccupied with undoing the sticky clasp of her valuable Christian relic from the delicate lace weave that he wasn't paying attention or comprehending what Lukas was saying.

"Daphne." Marguerite answers succinctly calm to the man whose steady hands at work with untangling the rosary necklace at the nape of her slender neck suddenly jerk back and seize up. The clasp he was struggling with in his strong fingers disintegrate to break apart with crystal blue beads and bronze findings falling everywhere.

"Oh, blast it! The damn thing… _I'm sorry…_ fell apart, Marguerite. Forgive my inept clumsy fingers." He apologizes for his crude language as well, as Ivers stoops down to pick up the falling crystals from the valuable bronze crucifix necklace in his fumbling hands that meant so much to his wife.

"I – I… I didn't know that Daphne… ever had a child." As he stands, Ivers' color rises to his cheeks. He looks down at the small boy who the intelligent man calculates to be about six or seven years old.

 _Which would just about be the correct time when_ …

There had been some indistinct recollections of sweet maid Daphne and the sketchy night before his wedding memories to Marguerite, that flashed through his overwhelmed mind every now and then.

"Neither did I… _Mon cherie_." Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath before she spins around to face her flummoxed, colored red in the face guilty husband, Princess Marguerite, in her mind repeats a small prayerful phrase upon the rosary that she was now clutching the beaded pieces remaining at her neck of the shattered holy necklace in her trembling hands.

"… _and forgive us our trespasses…"_

 _"…as we forgive those who trespass against us_ … My darling." With one forgiving glance, one divine phrase of tender devotion, the Parisian princess places all the broken pieces of her rosary into Prince Ivers' confounded ones until she had replaced every part of the scattered necklace into his shaking hands.

"You can fix this for me, Ivers. I know you can." Marguerite intones quite meaningfully, capturing Ivers' confused, perplexed gaze within hers as she presses the pieces of her broken rosary into his cold stiff hands.

She squeezes his big fingers with her thin delicate ones to warm them. Her single, loving smile did more in this one moment than all of their eight years together had ever accomplished.

With a relieved smile that all the past was in the past, and Marguerite was bighearted enough to let his indiscretions go with forgiving kindness, Ivers kisses Marguerite's warm hand over their rosary linked ones to his lips.

Just then, Daphne returns to the room with her hands full of new clothes hangers that awkwardly spill all over the sitting room floor when she looks up to see the couple embracing.

"Oh, dear. Forgive me… My lord… My lady… For intruding." Looking rather timid, a little fearful and definitely out of place, the short and plump little ladies' maid humbly diverts her eyes from the romantic scene between husband and wife. Daphne long ago realized that the attractive Prince was just as madly in love with his princess wife as she was with him. It was merely that the two of them simply had to admit it. It was clear to anyone that they truly loved one another.

 _But that's how it should be._

"Not at all, Daphne. You have a visitor. Maybe you can help your Mama hang the clothes on those pesky hangers, right, my dear Lukas?" Marguerite reaches a hand out to the little boy to join her. When the Frenchwoman squeezes the plump child's digits affectionately with a tender, almost maternal smile, her husband Ivers is again pleasantly surprised.

"Thank you, your Highness. Lukas, come on." Her high voice shaking with pent up emotion, Daphne's big round eyes that had entered the room with trepidation were now becalmed by her benevolent ladyship's compassion to herself and her son.

And the God-fearing Christian woman did it right before the eyes of her appreciative, impressed, encouraged man who connected them all together.

"It was real nice to meet you, Lieutenant Admiral. Maybe you can tell me all about ships and going to sea and stuff about the Navy later, before you leave." The pleasant boy who was enthusiastic about anything to do with the sea, had heard enough stories of this dashing naval man from his Mama to have a positive outlook on Princess Marguerite's husband.

Prince Ivers gives the innocent child a nod, the boy having no idea that this tall, chestnut haired man was anything beyond a dear old friend to his Mama. As Daphne turns back to collect her well-raised, affable child, her eyes meet Ivers' with a small smile for a split second of mutual acknowledgment.

"Marguerite?" Ivers was hanging on his wife's every word, the guilty man heartened by her remarkable magnanimity.

"I believe we can fix this together, Ivers." There were tears in both their eyes, streaming down their intermingled cheeks as Ivers and Marguerite kiss with a renewed passion for one another, restored through the simple Godly act of forgiveness…

* * *

The descending ebony dark of night wind whistles through Prince Hans' every thought as he feels airlifted by a familiar sensation beneath him after he had slugged his older brother Didrik for his attempted molestation of Queen Elsa.

 _Elsa?! What in Heaven's name are you doing here in Egeskov? And was that a maid's uniform?! Am I losing my mind, seeing chimerical, illusionary nymphs of you everywhere?_

One minute, the redheaded Prince had his feet firmly taking an aggressive, livid stance on the ground, and the next minute –

"Sitron? Is that you?" The alert, capable young Prince opens his eyes from where he was involuntarily, by rote, self-mounted by the eager horse—just as they did on many romps through the woods in practice of Hans' archery or horseback swordsmanship skills along the hillsides in his youth. High astride his noble steed, young Hans Westergaard felt he could do anything.

That fjord horse partner the thirteenth in line prince grew up with was the same friend whom Hans was now clinging to the furry black and white roached mane that accentuated the horse's strong neck and full length dorsal stripe.

"Whinny! Whinny!" The golden-dun colored stallion happily sings out as he gallops narrowly close to the wall of the gravel path that led around Egeskov Castle proper.

Sitron was so pleased as punch to be reunited with his best friend as Hans shakes his spinning head to get his bearings.

The classed-not-so-brilliant steed was racing headlong towards the Egeskov castle moat, causing Hans to blink twice before registering the immediate danger as he rights himself in the saddle of the fast galloping beast.

"Sitron! Where are you going, boy?! The drawbridges aren't down! SI-TRON!" Not that he didn't trust his fjord horse friend, but the gently rippling waters of the moat looming before Hans' distressed sight in the crescent moonlight night was not so reassuring to the red-haired man's widening eyes and octave higher tenor pitch.

Sitron had been with Elsa for two years now and the Ice Queen had trained the brave, brainless steed to believe that he could walk on water…

The freaking out Danish Prince, who was by no means a coward, was clever enough to calculate that a 14 hands high horse (5'5" at withers) weighing over 450 kilograms (approx. 900 lbs), plus his own inadequate male extra 145 lbs, jumping headlong into the 5 m (16 ft) deep moat in the dark of night was surely not going to end well.

Wrapping his arms around Sitron's bare neck, Hans watches in sheer terror, fully aware that sinking to the bottom of the Egeskov Castle moat may not be too preferable a choice at this moment. But if his Sitron was going down, Hans would go with him.

At least, to devise some way to pull the crazy horse back to the surface safe.

 ** _SKIP! SKIP! SKIP! SKIP! SKIP! SKIP!_**

Through the moonlit darkness, with precision hoof placement, one delicate step after another, the four-legged equine steps in near perfect rhythm across the dark still waters. His new and beautiful platinum blonde mistress had created a slippery ice footpath herself just beneath the surface of the moat that Sitron, so attuned to Elsa, was able to recognize its construction.

Elsa's 'Prince Hans-some' was as courageous and daring on the ice crossing oceans, as the good horse was loyal to his original master, besides keeping faith with his new queen.

"Whinny! Whinny!" Non-plussed, Sitron proudly urges Hans to dismount after the not so dumb horse, upon reaching the other side of the moat, paws at the ground near the back entrance to Egeskov Chapel where he sprinted the thirteenth-in-line Danish Prince across the moat waters to see.

"Egeskov Chapel?" Hans pauses at all the questions ringing church bells going off inside his head. His mind was still coming down from Sitron's bold race across the invisible ice path the stallion instinctively sensed was beneath the murky surface so the horse could give the appearance of walking upon water.

But soon, their arrival at the rear of the holy chapel takes all of Hans' focus away from his astounded conclusions and questions to Sitron concerning Elsa of Arendelle.

"Oh Sitron, you are brilliant!" With a bright glowing smile on his lips that he had not beamed in a long time, Hans smacks Sitron's muzzle with a great big wet kiss.

That makes the elated stallion chuckle, once again delighted to have his adventurous boy back again and in audacious adventure mode.

"Thank you, Sitron. I would have forgotten about this secret entrance without you to remind me! I have missed you, my friend!" Hans gives Sitron's gratified muzzle a quick nuzzle. "Now watch out for your mistress, Queen Elsa, should she reemerge and be more than an ephemeral dream. Protect her with your life—as would I." With a last friendly stroke to his beloved steed's gray smoky nose, Hans glances across the darkness to see that the solitary shining maiden a-gleam in the moonlight had safely snuck back into the rear of Egeskov.

Yes, she was real, she was here, though Hans could not give a single credible reason why beauteous and pure Queen Elsa of Arendelle would grace this unworthy place with her flawless presence.

 _Did…did she come to find me?_

 _Stop it, Hans! There's no way she would do that! You're nothing to her—as it should be. She's probably just a figment of your imagination! A stunningly breathtaking, nymph-like beauty in the moonlight, long-legged and—_

 _WESTERGAARD! Cease and desist these distractions!_

The Danish Prince flushes at his sin of prideful self-importance to believe a woman of Elsa's standing and rank would chase him - _of all people_ – all the way here, ingratiate herself to be disguised as a lowly servant, among his other immorally lustful issues. Hans knew his mind hadn't time for these selfish, improper thoughts as he throws open the Chapel's outside cellar door access way and clears his dry throat, then his head, to focus on the critical matter at hand.

Hans descends the concrete steps, but instead of entering the egress that led up into the Chapel, the bold Navy man unlocks yet another one of Egeskov's clandestine secrets.

This alternate passageway connected the Chapel cellar exit to a concealed priest-hole that had been dug over four centuries ago when the Castle was first drafted. The other end of the furtive tunnel would emerge out through the fortified Egeskov Castle complex's underground dungeons.

The several hundred foot-long tunnel was dug out by some extremely desperate monks in the high Dark Ages, during the time when Egeskov's foundations were starting to be laid. Even prior to its fortress thick double walls being erected in the Gothic stronghold architecture of the day.

After the 5 meters deep moat was filled to the top, this secret tunnel was at times the only exit between the main Castle and the world outside, during pitched battle when the drawbridges were not lowered, battlements raised.

Only a few privileged, daring individuals ever traversed this centuries old tunnel. Not since those forgotten dark times in European history when holy priests and men of the cloth were hunted down and martyred for their great faith in a Higher Authority than the ruling kings and despots of this fallen world in the high Middle Ages.

Except for a curious young Prince named Hans Westergaard, who, after finding the ancient maps in this holy chapel that served as one of his only refuges from half a score of wicked brothers, was one of the privileged few. As, without a second thought to his own safety, the courageous prince rushes headlong down the long claustrophobic tunnel in order to rescue his new friend.

* * *

Meanwhile, aboveground, Elsa ducks inside of Egeskov's rear service door entrance, racing back up to Rapunzel's room with even more far-out tales to tell her cousin than before.

 _Hans… Was that really you? Could I only have been dreaming, imagining you rescuing me like a Prince Charming from my childhood storybooks?_ Elsa pauses in her scurried stride to peer outside the window down towards the moonlit Chapel. Her still pounding heart did not dare to believe, although her eyes from a distance were almost certain that she felt a sense of some movement there –

"There you are, you lazy girl!"

"Oh!" Elsa cries out, startled when Mrs. Folmer, the housekeeper, berates her from where she was clearing out the Russian guests' room, down the second story hall.

"What are you doing up here, wasting time gawking out windows when there is much work downstairs to be done?! There's cleanup now that dinner is over, girl, and the ladies' aperitifs are wrapping up!" The strict, older woman grabs Elsa by her tweaked ear.

"Just look at you! Traipsing outdoors, rolling in the mud and grass no doubt with a certain _young_ Master of this house who vanished from the after dinner service for unknown reasons…Hmm… We servants downstairs are aware of more than they upstairs would ever dare or care to know of some people's unsavory activities." The suspicious, accusatory woman who had been in this house long enough to be wary of Master Didrik's meanderings in the hedges with many a pretty little maid of this Castle he was infamous for, looks down her long crooked nose at Elsa.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Folmer. I just needed some fresh air." Elsa apologizes, but the old pinched face housekeeper was less than compassionate.

"I'll give you some fresh air, my girl! You're going to go down to the kitchen and help Daisy wash the dishes until every last one is clean and dry, even if it takes the two of you lazy girls all night! Cut from the same cloth you are! And then there is the polishing of Queen Louise's silver service for you to look forward to in the morning, before you step a single foot outside again! Now, march, girl! And don't be getting any high-faluting ideas, missy, just because your pretty face and shapely figure makes you favored with some of our, shall we say, less than discerning young princes. Now off to work with you!" The dictatorial, nasty housekeeper had it in for 'Elsie' for being a temptress to their already gone astray sixth son of the King, not to mention a little jealousy, as the middle-aged sour woman drags Elsa away.

The cowed Ice Queen shrugs to a curious Rapunzel, appearing out of her door. The Prussian princess simply shrugs back with an empathic smile, quite at a loss at how to help her cousin out here, opting to remain silent lest she cause more trouble.

Rapunzel hurriedly closes the door when one down the far far end of the hall slams closed from where it had been opened partways, listening into Elsa's berated exchange with the housekeeper, too.

Though her conversation with Elsa was thwarted earlier, Rapunzel was almost grateful. The genuine, honest girl had a terrible time with avoiding the truth of her knowledge about Hans and she feared it being spilled out to an inquiring Elsa.

"I'd be happy to go and help Elsa with the dishes. But sometimes the slippery dishes jump out of my branches and I break a few. I think that's why they don't usually like me to do the washing up back home." Olaf the snowman offers after his orange carrot nose almost gets slammed in the door from where he was peeking out to see Elsa at Rapunzel's feet.

"No, Olaf. I think we should leave Elsa to take care of it herself. She'll come up, when she's ready." With a sigh and gently rubbed ailing tummy due to its current inhabitant(s), Rapunzel tries to smile down at Olaf.

Rapunzel plops down on her bed to rest again as her screwed up face was attempting to imagine the best way to gently put the bad news to her fragile cousin about Hans, totally unaware of all the excitement going on mere minutes ago outdoors.

"Oh, Eugene, I wish you were here to help me know what I should do!" She mumbles into the pillow as she lies down. "I know, you'd say ' _Go to sleep, Blondie'._ " Rapunzel puts on a sorry mimic voice of her husband's sly tones, but it made her feel better to think he was near. "Wherever you are, I hope you can get some rest, too – oh!" Hearing her husband's loud snore her mind's eye, - _or was that the open grates?_ \- the Princess of Corona nearly jumps out of her skin when she feels a sudden tap on her insecure dreamy shoulder.

"Pascal! There you are! Did you find Anna and Kristoff?! What's wrong?!" Rapunzel had known her sidekick pet forever long enough to sense when her silent chameleon was anxious. The girl had left the window in her bedroom open a crack all evening, just in case the little green friend returned to report back when she was down at dinner earlier.

After a series of pantomimes, Rapunzel was a good lizard translator enough to understand that Anna and Kristoff had been taken captive and brought down to the Castle's dungeon.

"Oh-oh! They've been taking down to the _dungeon_?! Why do Anna and Kristoff get all the fun?! I want to be sent to the dungeon, too!" Olaf bounces up and down from snow foot to snow foot in simpleminded excitement for anything new. No human fear of captivity or punishment was ever involved in the snowman's naïve psyche.

"I don't know! Should I ask Princess Emma to get Prince Kaleb to let them go? Am I going to explain why we're even here!? Maybe I can get Elsa to help… Should I? No…" The indecisive girl considers all the new problems rolling around in her head-aching brain.

Olaf gazes up at her, blankly expectant.

"But how am I going to get them out of the dungeon without causing an international incident? I don't know! Eugene! Help me!" A spazzed-out Rapunzel scruffs at her shaggy brown hair in frustration, feeling so very alone without her love's timely advice. Rather ill again, she looks out frightened through the window at the pair of reindeer who had floated up in front of it to see if Pascal had delivered their urgent message.

Pascal runs his little legs up to her bedpost and gives Rapunzel's cheek a tender pat. Then he sits back on his haunches, crossing his arms. Coloring brown, the chameleon taps his nose and puts on a heavy lidded arrogant gaze that signified Flynn Rider's expression quite descriptively. Then Pascal points down to Rapunzel's heaving chest.

"Oh yeah, that's right! I still have these…" The Princess of Corona reaches down into her corset's ample cleavage to produce a small ring of lock picking tools that Eugene had bestowed upon her for one birthday many years ago when the plucky girl wanted to learn all the tricks of his trade, too.

And, boy, did he spend hours and hours and hours teaching her _everything_ he knew, and then some, about this and many other of the thief's quick finger, sly hand crafts until Rapunzel was quite – _ahem_ \- proficient.

Rapunzel giggles in secret delight at the memory, her toes dancing at the happy times spent with her handsome fella.

But that momentary giddiness passes when she looks at the ring of lockpick tools and the new application.

"But I don't even know where the dungeon **is** to break them out! Oh, I don't know about this!" At first enthusiastic, then deflated and quickly discouraged to back out, stomach sick at the daunting task ahead, overwhelmed Rapunzel tosses off her shoes again. She closes her eyes and throws her head back to the bed's headboard until she was leaning against its hardboard at eye level with Pascal.

"Hello? Princess Rapunzel? We thought we heard some strange noises in here. Are you speaking to someone? While we were passing by, we thought we'd peek in, because we were worried…" Affable Princess Elisabeth of Flanders brushes back her tan plated hair, not so comfortable in addressing her suspicions of absent Prince Didrik and questions of him amusing himself in visiting beauty, Princess Rapunzel's, noisy room, uninvited.

Rapunzel jumps up with a start when the door cracks open and the pair of princesses she had befriended earlier peek in with their quizzical and coy smiles.

"Princess Elisabeth! Princess Gloria!" Rapunzel gives Pascal a panicked look, the green chameleon freezes in place where he was at the headboard edge and pretends to be a mahogany wooden post statuette.

But Olaf was neither so stealthy nor subtle.

"Hello, again Princess Lujza! Oh, who is this new friend? My name is Olaf and I like warm hugs." Using his trademark greeting line, Olaf waddles over across the room and stretches his arms up to the woman whom he never met before. The friendly snowman smiles wide up to the new acquaintance of the Belgian Princess whose pretty face was more of curiousity than she was startled. Especially after her sister-in-law, Princess Lujza, walked right by Olaf with a familiar pat and ruffled the 'hair' branches on his pleasantly giggling cool snowmound head.

A quirkily smiling Elisabeth gives demanding Olaf an awkward hug, the snowman happy as a clam to make another new friend.

"Perhaps we can be of assistance here, dear Rapunzel. This scheme of yours to break some one out of the dungeon sounds much more titillating tonight than a card game of rubbers!" Princess Lujza of Portugal plunks on the bed beside Rapunzel with a plump sisterly air and arm around the Prussian's thin shoulders.

"Did I say… _Dungeon_ …? You probably just overheard me telling Olaf about the… _buchtein—_ yes the buchtein! I've been craving them for dessert all night. You see, it's a type of Prussian sweet roll with powdered sugar and vanilla and…and…" Rapunzel was such a bad liar that any attempts to mask her words and implicate innocent Olaf causes the nosy Portuguese princess to place her hands on her hips, shake her head and wag her finger at her falsehearted friend demonstratively.

"No more games, Rapunzel, dear. We are too good friends, I think, to lie to each other, yes? Please let us in on your secret, so we can help you, dear. You can tell us the whole unadulterated story about how you got involved in this interesting affair on the way down to the dungeon we will lead you to." Go-getter Princess Lujza quite officiously says as she nods to perky Elisabeth who was already bundling up the half dressed in her nightwear Rapunzel into her robe and shawl wrap.

"I think it's going to be pretty chilly down there, so you had better dress warm." The sweet Belgian woman had chills running up and down her spine just to look at the happily humming snowman and his inexplicable snow flurry cloud above his head. Princess Elisabeth would always make it a point to keep her pair of little girls warm, even if the youngsters protested their fussbudget mom's caring.

"But…" Rapunzel looks to Elisabeth and Gloria Lujza who were doting over and treating the overwhelmed and stunned visiting Princess like a true friend and little sister, with no remonstration, only offering their help for her late night adventure.

Rapunzel glances from the obliging adventurous royal women to Pascal who shrugs and Olaf who smiles encouragingly up at her.

"No 'buts', my larcenous friend! We will be – what do you call it – your seconds-in-command – what is it my Peiter calls it? – I love it when he talks all Navy-man-like – ah, yes! Your 'grunts!' That's it! And since it's my turn tonight to stag off – that just means 'guard duty' – to watch the children, he won't miss me when he gets done carousing with the hob-knobs. I left a note telling him that the girls and I are having a sleepover with Elisabeth and her girls." Gloria Lujza had the whole thing already schemed. Her big bear of a hubby with the fuzzy friendly muttonchops was a push-over in her masterful hands.

"And my Mattias already informed me that he would be staying up very late on some money matters and dealmaking with the diplomats tonight, so I don't expect him to be back for a long time anyway. Those discussions can take all night. Believe me I know. My girls are teenagers and love babysitting Gloria's trio of cousins." Elisabeth also had her money-minded husband's routine down pat after all their married years together.

"And your little froggy will be our scout." The dark haired Princess looks at Pascal with the wink as she kneels down to the ground to put Rapunzel's shoes back on her feet, inviting Pascal to hop onto her ample shoulder.

"Aren't you eager to show off the skills your illustrious husband of a thief taught you?" Lujza taunts an astounded Rapunzel into getting up off her bed and coming along with them on this dark night's adventure. After all, the bored with hum-drum normal royal life princesses were ready to go a little wild while their men were still downstairs, playing pool and cavorting with the visiting diplomats and dignitaries while sampling the Danish wine and alcoholic cocktails deep into the night. So why can't they try a little diverting entertainment for a change?

 _What would_ _Eugene_ _say to this offer?_ Rapunzel's mind was racing as the pair of princesses look at her expectantly.

"What the hell."

Taking a leaf right out of her dearest Flynn Rider's crass dictionary, Rapunzel covers her cursing mouth the next second after she said it, shyly looking around to the two women who were staring at her wide-eyed in silence as the three of them were standing facing each other in the middle of the bedroom.

"Oops. Sorry." After she realizes what she said aloud that caused prim Princess Elisabeth to blush and amused Lujza to break into chuckles, Rapunzel stops at the desk to scribble out a quickly scrawled note for Elsa should she ever finish her dishwashing duty before Rapunzel gets back from her secret mission.

With one glance to Pascal, the chameleon rushes to the window to quickly salute to Sven and Svala who were still both stealthily hovering outside. The chameleon conveys that their urgent message was received and the rescue plans set into motion.

Olaf's new friend, Princess Elisabeth, had the wherewithal to grab up the fur bearskin rug from the floor and wrap Olaf in it so she could carry the concealed, insulated frozen snowman along with them without suffering frostbite.

"Okay! Let's go find us a dungeon, girls." In a conspiring whisper, Rapunzel says with a determined look crossing her brow now that she had a support team to back the uncertain young mother–to-be up on this late-night insanity.

* * *

Deep down in the dark dank depths of the dungeons beneath Egeskov Castle, an old man turns over on the small bench where he had been holed up for days now.

 _Blink. Blink._

Was a pretty girl with caramel ginger hair, decidedly not his wife - _God rest my Matilde's sainted soul_ – sleeping right next to him on the narrow stone shelf?

"Oy vey **!** I didn't think I would ever be too old to remember that! Didn't know you still had it in you, Aged P! Good morning, sweet cheeks." The ancient old Prussian pats Princess Anna's youthful cheek with his knobbly hand as the old man muses these forgotten points of interest to his misleading thoughts.

"What? Kristly… Hmmm!? You're not my studly guy at all! Ewgh!"

 ** _SLAP_**!

From dreamy to sickened in .03 seconds flat, Anna derides the crooked, gold toothed and grinned, wrinkly face that was sticking his big bulbous nose right in her peacefully snoozing one parallel to him on the bench to give his cheek a harsh slap.

Anna jumps up from the bench where she and Aged P had been sharing a cover in the thick dark ebony damp cold dungeon consisting of Kristoff's removed dark gray with aqua and gold fancy trimmed vest.

"I warned you to keep your distance from my Feisty Pants, Aged P." Kristoff was chuckling from where he had been doggedly using Anna's sunflower pendant in all its modified utilitarian functionality as the lockpick.

"Argh. I suck at this. Here Anna, you're awake now, you try." Dejected at his maladroit ineptness and amateurish incompetence at this delicate finger skill of the devious, underhanded variety that the other two guys made look so easy, Kristoff sighs loudly. He lets his defeated head hang back to the side with a grimace.

"Let me at it!" Mid-yawn as she slings Kristoff's vest over his head, Anna yells out, her run-in with Aged P already past tense as she smiles eagerly, instantly awake from her sleepiness in exchange for excitement.

Stepping hard on Kristoff's toe as she stumbled towards them, the piquant Princess plunks onto her hubby's lap where he was knelt down in front of the cell door lock. She plucks her altered snow flower sunflower brooch pendant from his big all-thumbs hands and immediately goes at the lockpicking task with verve.

"So, one more time. Why are you locked up here under false allegations, Aged P? If you're really a jeweler and just accidentally gave the wrong gem in the wrong ring to this prince jerk, why didn't they just let you fix the error by switching the stone out and be done with it?" Kristoff balances back on his haunches, as Anna, sitting on his lap, makes cute little noises and wiggles her tight little bum around as she works on the _dang blasted, no good jammed_ cell door lock while her husband questions the older man.

"Well, you know how it is, young man. I did a fine job – a real fine job! - on the gold engraved setting. But then those darn pesky little sparklers…they get away from me every now and then, even though I'm sure to use the Schrauf's rule on brilliants to the letter! You see, I've been in need of some new spectacles for a while, and there may have been a few little tiny errors here and there on the job lately. And then there was that little accident with my cat Tavernier. The clumsy beast mixed up the first water 6 carat diamonds with some decorative 4 carat and 2 carat stones on my cutting counter table. And with my Nostradamas getting married to that pretty little Hilde girl, with all the wedding preparations for the ceremony that my girls were helping with instead, no one was there to help me clean up or double check the gemstone quality… I didn't want Nozzy or my girls to worry that I'm losing my eyesight! They worry themselves sick over their _shmendrik_ (stupid person) of a father enough as it is!" Aged P bangs his noggin with the heel of his palm in self punishment.

"Have you explained that to them yet? If your eyesight is at issue, maybe they'll be more understanding." Kristoff begins to say sympathetically.

"No rich folks want to cut you a break when you're in our working man class. You probably have seen that yourself, Young'un. They'd rather string you up in a monkey trial as examples before they listen to any explanations as to my glaucoma problem settling in. So I have little hope of being released before the end of my days or even facing the executioner's noose." Aged P was quite calm and sedate about his imminent trial and punishment phase of execution sentencing that the old man was facing in the morning.

"But, if you just tell the truth that this is all a result of the mix up accident, maybe the judge will let you replace the gems to make it right." An honest businessman himself, Kristoff says, trying to find a logical solution.

"Say! Do you think a single one of those holier than thou royal rich folks will cut some slack to a working-class _shlimazel_ (constant bad luck man) in my class, boyo? _Gonishtheldfn_ (I'm beyond help)." Holding up his hands, Aged P comments on his lot in life that he was including himself with working-class man Kristoff. The able-bodied, rough working hands on type of capable sturdy chap made Kristoff a _Yiddisher kop_ (young smart person) in Aged P's book than any of those rich toffs.

"Well, is it the truth?" Kristoff continues to press the old man's sales pitch for its veracity. The elderly gentleman with a jeweler's glass continually in place over his ailing eyes was a hard study to read for the entertaining schtick he had been providing the mountain man.

"I swear to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that this is the absolute truth." Aged P pledges before the Creator above quite dramatically, making Kristoff give a resigned nodded side.

What higher authority could Kristoff ask for with better credentials than that?

"Then we'll do our best to try to speak on your defense as character witnesses, if you get the chance." The blond Ice harvester vows to this pathetic elderly gent.

"I only regret not being around to see my first grandbaby be born." Aged P says, already giving up, despite Kristoff's best attempts to lighten the situation.

"Hey! Don't talk that way! We are going to get you out of here, old geezer!" Anna, the eternally positive one in any room, did not appreciate his negativity all around her.

"I'm afraid a pair of traveling singers aren't going to have much pull with the royal Danish princes and the King up there holding court as Magistrate. Don't get yourselves more in trouble for this almost dead old carcass anyway." Aged P found his situation hard to see any way out at the point.

"What if I told you we weren't just ordinary singers. What if I told you we were just pretending to be singers who turned out to be the Princess of Arendelle and my guy, the Snow Prince?" Anna pauses in her metal clanging at the bar door and that persnickety lock to say slyly with a great deal of pride in revealing Kristoff's regal title to someone.

The practical blond mountain man rolls his eyes to the heavens.

"Oi vey! What if I told you that I've got a bridge in Corona to sell you, little girl! Ha ha! What a funny gal you are! Ha ha Ha!" Aged P falls back down to the stone bench, laughing so hard at Anna's dead serious, soon sour expression that she seethes through her teeth as she doubles her energy at lockpicking angrily.

"So we have a pair of royalty among us?" A smarmy voice echoes through the pitch blackness from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Anna stops her scraping at the metal keyhole and backs up as Kristoff instinctively pulls her closer to him and rises to his full 6' 5" height in a protective stance.

The evil voice was enough to make the hackles of anyone's necks stand straight up. The intuitive man of nature, the Wind Whisperer's every keen sense was aware of just how depraved that wicked dripping voice was.

That's when a long bagged item is brought in to be dragged by a pair of hooded dark men into the iron bar cell beside the one that Anna and Kristoff were sharing with Aged P. The couple clutch at one another in mutual fear. Both newlywed husband and wife had a bad feeling about the satchel's content that made a sickening thud against the stone ground floor when it hit.

"What's in there?" Anna finds her voice to ask when the last hooded minion begins to cut with a sharp knife back at the dark canvas drop cloth from the elongated dense item that had been carelessly dropped into the cell like so much refuse.

The cackled response in the ilky darkness of the Egeskov dungeon recesses was almost as terrifying as what Anna and Kristoff were watching what the dark minions were doing. The dark cloaked lackey slides his sharp knife along the canvas covering, to reveal what had been obscured inside.

"Bait." Is the only one single world that the deep, ominous, threatening voice venomously hisses out as it moves further away from beyond their cell.

And the once polydactyl man flexes his right hand and its still sore, throbbing, stolen sixth finger before replacing his glove.

His murderous eyes filled with vengeance and hatred flash for that short second in the flickering torchlight when Kristoff and Anna could make out the stranger's hideous, scarred face at the same moment the final lackey unveils the bag's occupant.

"Eugene!" Anna whispers against Kristoff's defensive chest when cousin Rapunzel's husband lifelessly crashes against his precious nose to the unforgiving stone floor of the connected dungeon cell.

"What have you done to him?! You monster!" Anna, having shown little affection to Eugene Fitzherbert for all the trouble and danger his unwise choices brought to herself and Elsa, now passionately gives his new attacker a tongue lashing as she wrenches out of Kristoff's grip and rushes over to the iron bars.

But the eerie cackling only increases as the evil manipulator Count Humperdinck Rügen was putting into play a plot to take down, once and for all, his greatest nemesis.

The cold malevolence that this vile man exuded to the already chilled, clammy dungeon makes Anna's skin crawl with frightened goosebumps.

"Come to me, devil boy. Come fall into my trap, you wily red fox. And I'll finally have you just where I want you – in my grasp!"

As Anna hears the insane ranting of the madman whose masterful fencing sword was beheading several empty helmets of knight's armor as he unleashes his vengeful wrath out upon skeletal remains of former prisoners. The deranged killer was in salivated anticipation for the live prey he most desired to torture, banking on the audacious fool's faux valiant psyche to play into his former Master's grand scheme…

* * *

 _shmendrik_ \- stupid person in Hebrew

 _shlimazel_ \- constant bad luck man in Hebrew

 _Gonisht heldfn_ \- 'I'm beyond help'- in Hebrew

 _Yiddisher kop_ \- young smart person in Hebrew

* * *

Did you like this installment, Frozen friends? It's a Whole New World getting everyone closer to the story climax…

I thought the big scene would be here already, but there's a lot of background plot and secondary characters (such as Hans 4th brother Ivers and his wife Marguerite and son Lukas being revealed) to finally deal with before we get to the crux of this Act V story arc, it seems!

These lively Disney characters do what they will and rearrange my original storyboard ideas. Sometimes I feel like I'm only a spectator! But maybe that's the secret to writing in character protagonists, antagonists, and anyone in between! J

And excited romanticist King Friedrich and his frightened pragmatic Queen Arianna certainly are having some high-flying fun up there on their flying horsies! Too bad GPS wasn't invented yet in 1851… ^-* But throwing in a little Shakespeare, makes up for it! (I love literature set to poetry. _'To be or not to be..._ ')

Wasn't the scene about walking on the water with Sitron and Hans grand? Our usually calm and collected got-it-together Danish Prince was pulling his red hair out, but loves his horse pal too much to scold! I thought it was sweet how Hans, acting like a little kid, hugged and kissed his best childhood friend in grateful relief to be back together again! And Sitron had become so close to Elsa these past 2 years he was left to her to innately trust the Ice Queen's magical workings. ^0^ He could teach Hans a thing or two about the Arendelle Queen…

Like a ballet dance, Hans and Elsa keep 'almost' seeing one another, then chalk it off as fanciful dreaming because neither really actually get a good look, just a cloying feeling the other is around somewhere. It kinda keeps the tension up in the story not to have them surely _know_ the other is present – both believing it crazy that their fantasized partner would go to such extremes for them when they should not.

Now Rapunzel has a secret mission – and a pair of willing sidekicks- of her own in this adventure yarn! Let's see what happens to the Princess Power plus Olaf trio of jailbreakers! It's sure to be fun with Flynn-er Eugene and his crafty little wife involved!

That evil Count Rugen has a trap laid for our Hans! On no!

Please review and tell me your favorite part! See you again real soon! I'll be plotting out the next chapter tonight to see what the gang gets up to in this complicated romance/adventure!

May God hold you in the Palm of His Hand this weekend and always!

HarukaKou


	18. Chapter 18 - Pride & Prejudice

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 18**

 **"Pride and Prejudice"**

Rapunzel had been on many adventures before that had the same high level of excitement, stealth and mystery as this latest one. The only thing different now was that her beloved Eugene was not at her side. Though his confident bravado was not present as Rapunzel carefully journeys down into Egeskov Castle's lower-level floors, she did not feel as alone as she thought she might have.

The trio of princesses had soon turned into a quintet when Princesses Hermine and Adelaide had peered out of their doors at the noise Rapunzel, Elisabeth and Lujza were making. The two diversely contrasting princesses, pale little Hermine-sweet and shy and ditzy, while tall, dark haired, imposing Adelaide was her exact opposite.

Nonetheless, both curious females, with their respective mates expected to be occupied for a great deal of the evening hours, now were following the secret rescue team out to the Ladegården stables.

"Do you think my Berte will be vexed that I've left the room without him knowing?" Hermine twists her yellow-blonde locks of sausage curls in lip-bitten worry as the fretting young lady tentatively trails the swift-paced group of women in the hall ahead of her.

"Hermine. Your husband is ALWAYS vexed about one thing or another. Believe me, you won't perish like a flower bloom for leaving your room un-chaperoned, my dear. I have given birth to two children, visited where-soever I pleased, and survived nicely. Whether or not my husband cared to have a say in it or not." Independent woman Princess Adelaide makes the declaration to brow-beaten Hermine, hitting at both of their inattentive and smothering mates.

Sharp-tongued Adelaide of Austria had always had her Italian mother's forceful, hot-headed streak combined with her Austrian father's stubborn, strict attitude. She treated her prearranged marriage to seventh in line Prince Jurgen of the Southern Isles as more of an obligated assignment than a romantic love affair. Right from the start of their rushed marriage, each time her career Søværnet Naval officer came home from his yearly tour of duty, he only ate, drank and talked about his time onboard his beloved ships, making Adelaide just as certain that her husband's first, true love was the sea – and not her.

The prideful, austere woman had learned to live with it, practically raising their two daughters, who had been conceived only during his ship's leave periods, on her own. Spending most of her staid time in her renowned home castle of Kronborg, set among its own isthmus by the sea, in solitude, Adelaide had become rather authoritarian in her lonely freedom from the husband she thought preferred the ocean as a lover rather than her.

That conviction made autonomous Princess Adelaide of Austria tough and severe to the world outside, and distantly aloof and prejudiced chary with Jurgen whenever he popped up for a rare visit home.

Sentiments of which that were in stark contrast to pusillanimous Hermine, who hung on every single word that her overbearing new husband Berte said to her in their sprawling, 13th century medieval converted to baroque Dragsholm Castle.

As ninth in line to his Father's throne, Prince Berte had little hope of taking over the Kingdom of Denmark. But the supercilious 36-year-old man ruled over his little Dragsholm fiefdom in Zealand with an iron fist to satisfy his power-hungry domineering control in his said to be haunted castle.

Timid and oft terrified in their great big castle where ghosts of ladies of all shades and an earl with his horse were claimed to linger, Princess Hermine of Waldeck was never strong-minded enough to stand up against him or ever protest her husband's heavy-handed officiousness. The dreamy blonde young woman knew she wasn't brilliant or cunning an long ago, Hermine had decided that falling in love with her partner was the be-all and end-all in her simple world, so that meant she would blindly follow whatever rule he set for her now.

However, when kind-hearted Hermine overheard Princesses Lujza and Elisabeth talking with Princess Rapunzel when she passed by in the hall, she wanted to help her new friend, too.

Perhaps it was because the Princess of the Corona's spunky disposition and sweet tender friendliness had garnered her some new friendships that were priceless, even from some fairly unexpected, diverse quarters.

As she follows Princess Lujza's lead, Rapunzel glances from side to side, encouraged to see her sister princesses surrounding her, whether out of friendship, duty or curiosity.

The dark-haired Lujza had confidently led Rapunzel and her sister-in-law Elisabeth downstairs through Egeskov and out to the Ladegården stables in search of the underground dungeon complex that Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal personally knew a secret entrance to.

It was when she was first being courted by her Peiter, at the time she and her husband-to-be had been –a _hem_ \- romping in the stables after an invigorating horseback ride across Egeskov's western rolling hills. The swarthy, earthiest Westergaard, the dark bearded young man brought his fiancée down to explore the infamous Egeskov dungeons after she and her dear horse, Matador- _God rest his faithful spirit –_ stumbled upon the entrance. After much playful prodding, Peiter had satisfied Lujza's insatiable curiosity, hidden beneath the hay bails that Prince Peiter pushed aside.

As a young girl of twenty, leaving her family's palace home in Portugal for the first time, thrill-seeking Princess Gloria Lujza wished to see something exciting of the autumn dreary, boring old fortress castle of Peiter's childhood home of Egeskov.

So when her then 25-year-old Prince offered to show the brazen young Portuguese woman the secret entrance to the dungeons that he and his brothers had discovered during playtime in the newly converted stables, Princess Gloria Lujza jumped at the chance.

But those exciting days before their marriage when her Peiter could not refuse her anything was over twelve years ago now. Since then, she and her husband had visited this Egeskov castle to come from their own, less fortress-like royal Danish abode in Marselisborg Palace in Aarhus each Christmas and on his Kingly father's birthday. But the mysterious Egeskov dungeons were no longer on the list of high priorities to visit once their baby girls started being born on a biennial basis.

There was a new lock barring that particular stable stall that Princess Lujza did not recall being there ever before. So Rapunzel now had to ply her lockpicking know-how in order to unhinge the rusty stable stall deadbolt lock that Lujza had led the group to.

As Adelaide watched with prudish snobbish airs, Elisabeth and Lujza had then shifted the covering hay bails, insisting that the two pregnant young ladies who wanted to help stand back from the physical labor.

When, in a team effort of pulling the secret entrance to the dungeons of Egeskov opened, all five wide-eyed women peer down into the dark shaft aperture.

"It's terribly dark down there. Eek!" In a shaky, small voice that squeaked when a startled spider scurries on the stone step right by her nosy, poking in head, Princess Hermine couldn't help but give an outward tremble. She shrinks back from the cold draft of stale air that whistled up from the dank opening at them as she wraps her arms around her shivering self.

"Ooh-ooh! That's an a-rach-nid! I've been studying them in the 8th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica Minister Kai wants us to read to Kristoff! It's a _Sa-i-tis_ _bar-pipes_! Elsa doesn't like them either! But Anna and I think they're kinda cute with all their googly eyes and fuzzy legs! _Bees a-buzz, spiders spin sticky, webby fuzz, and I'll be under my P_ _ersonal_ _S_ _now_ _Flurry, in Summer…_ " Olaf begins crooning after the magical snowman had given poor squeaking Princess Hermine her second scare of the evening when his head popped out from the swaddled carpet Elisabeth was holding.

"What's that, now!?" Hermine backs up even further, causing some hay bails stored in the rafters above to release hayfever dust, which in turn makes Olaf sneeze –

 _ **AHH-CHOO!**_

His magical carrot nose flies straight into the mouth of Prince Anders' uppity horse, _Ya'akov_ – which meant _Jacob_ , or ' _held by the heel supplanter'_ in Biblical terms. But the ebony black stallion named Ya'akov almost immediately spits the unripe vegetable out with snorting disdain at its questionable quality.

"It's alright, Hermine, that's my friend Olaf. And it's just a _leettle_ , bitty spider. He won't hurt you, But…Umm…Maybe some of you should stay up top here and keep watch so that we're not followed?" The compassionate Prussian princess, who was unafraid of creepy-crawly bugs due to the fact that sometimes they were the only visitors from the world below to dare climb to her eighty foot high tower – _until that charming preying mantis, Flynn Rider, scaled her heights_ \- offers under the polite guise of pragmatic expediency to her spineless, dithering friend.

"Right! I volunteer to keep watch!" With an eager, relieved raise of her hand, Hermine sings out, giving a deep, contented sigh. She always was terrified of anything that had more legs and eyes -and _fangs-_ than she. Although, a talking snowman with a removable sneezing carrot nose came a close second to that.

"I'll stay with Hermine." Princess Adelaide says responsibly with a condescending smirk, smoothing back her prim chignon. The woman's stringent ' _cleanliness is next to Godliness'_ attitude was not one to endure crawling through filthy underground tunnels.

"Okay. Thanks, girls. We hope to be back soon with my cousins." Rapunzel nods in agreement as she gains all the women's admiration when the crazy girl fearlessly swings herself down to the highest top step from the protruding rope hanging from the stable floor.

But this was nothing for a girl daredevil with heights, who once swung down from a monstrous high tower by just the luminous leverage of her magical hair.

Perky Elisabeth and reckless Lujza shrug to Adelaide, then each other, and soon follow the daring visiting Princess Rapunzel's lead.

Creeping down the rope through the entry beneath the stable subfloor to the top landing, Rapunzel now pauses to look confused by the montage of several firm spiraling stone staircases leading down to different sections of the underground dungeon.

At first, her unsure, perplexed face appeared as if she just wanted to cry. But Pascal leaps from her shoulder and gazes up with a great big wide smile to hearten his best girl to have courage. Then, with a silent salute, the supportive chameleon waits for Rapunzel's small grateful smile back before he races off into the dark abyss of the unknown ahead.

"Follow that chameleon!" Olaf chirps merrily, causing Elisabeth to chuckle at the snowman in her arms, who was cheerful despite the utter darkness they were entering.

"Let's go." Rapunzel is reminded of that time under the catacomb of tunnels leading from Snuggly Duckling when she and Flynn had escaped the palace guards.

 _Hope we're not chased like that again…I don't know if my current companions are up for that kind of mad dash…I'm not even sure I am…I miss you Eugene…_

Reminiscing about those adventurous times when her journey with her dearest love began, Rapunzel takes a page from her husband's book and grabs a lit torch off the wall to illuminate their path into the dearth ahead.

"You think we're going around in circles, dear? These past few corridors look rather repetitive. Gloria?" Princess Elisabeth gently pries in doubtful questions at her bold sister-in-law with the persistent query.

"Hush, Elisabeth. I am trying to think." The well-rounded Portuguese princess, who was just one year senior to her Belgian sister-in-law, retorts in a clipped tone after a frustrated sigh led her down a dead-end path and the group was forced to back track.

"I must admit I do not remember if we should turn left or right here. Why do all of these spiraling staircases have the same armored knight stationed in the exact same manner? Could these fellows not at least have a different colored feather plume in their tin can helmets?" Lujza bellyaches at the stiff-necked metal noblemen forms and their matching red feather plumes affixed to their helmets, as she bangs on the nearest one's empty head in frustration.

"But I like the red feathers! I always imagined I would make a grand knight in shining ice armor! And, by the way, these knights are not all _exactly in_ the same position." Olaf points out in his inimitable simple way from where he was peeking out of the insulated bearskin rug that pleasant Princess Elisabeth had him coolly stored within her arms.

"You're right, Olaf! This one has his arm raised about chest level, the next one's finger is pointing towards that right passage. And the next has his armored finger hooked to indicate this particular spiral staircase down. I believe your snowman friend is very astute, Rapunzel." Princess Elisabeth's thick Belgian accent extols Olaf's simple logic, as he puffs up like a snow peacock from the accolades.

"Then that way we go." Rapunzel was certainly appreciative of having their company and ideas to bounce off as the group finally discovers the proper staircase to the large capacity dungeon. The company gaze down at the dark area below in wonder as they enter the large capacity underground dungeon's series of cage cells that were created to hold an entire army captive if necessary.

"I knew I could find it!" Feeling like a crucial member of the team, Olaf sings out merrily as he hops down from his place in Elisabeth's arms. Olaf takes to the steps that he quite giddily slides and slips down hooting and hollering all the way.

"Olaf! Hush! We're trying to be inconspicuous!" Rapunzel scolds in a severe whisper to her snow friend who was rapidly descending the stone stairs, creating quite a ruckus as he was singing all the way down bouncing along his snow bottom on each step that led down to the tall dungeon's architecture.

"Oh! I'm very good at being inconsistent!" Thinking himself brilliant, Olaf whispers back in his eager tones, totally oblivious to what the word 'inconspicuous' meant at all as he hits the base of the stone landing with a slushy _kerplop_ and chortle.

"Hee hee!"

"So it was your cousin, Princess Anna's, idea to come to Egeskov in search of Mattias' little brother, Prince Hans? She must care about Hans very much go through all of this trouble. Traveling to the Southern Isles surreptitiously and even getting herself locked up in a dungeon for him? They must be very close. It is quite touching a story." Elisabeth remarks in a whisper as she digests what Rapunzel has been explaining as the trio of them walked.

The bright eyed Belgian Princess considered Anna's compassionate sweet devotion to the man whom Rapunzel had inferred that Anna's sister Elsa had not only forgiven for his crimes to her kingdom and her crown, but had developed an attachment to on top of it.

"You could say it like that…" Rapunzel mumbles at the thought of Anna's 'touching' sentiment concerning Mr. Hans Westergaard as the three women purposefully move by torchlight under the cover of darkness.

The memory of all the nasty barbs and cutting digs full of innuendo at just the general name of the man along the way comes rushing back to Rapunzel. The way her reactionary cousin Anna had viciously treated Prince Hans on that incredible journey to stop a sea monster in Norway, just a few weeks back, made the Prussian girl grin now.

Rapunzel had been quietly retelling the shortened version of the circumstances that led her from Anna's wedding in Arendelle all the way to that final battle with the evil pirate in Lofoten. It held Lujza and Elisabeth practically stunned speechless as they continued to move deeper into the dungeon.

Rapunzel smiles at the end of her abbreviated tale as she also fondly remembered how Anna was the driving force in this new search for Hans, too. Something by the end of that adventure up north had turned Princess Anna of Arendelle from begrudging to benevolent towards her sworn enemy, Prince Hans. And that made the sympathetic Prussian princess both proud and happy inside to see her younger cousin – whom she considered more of as a little sister – find forgiveness in her heart more than resentful anger.

' _Make me a channel of Your peace…It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.'_

In her mind, Rapunzel recites the words of the Prayer of St. Francis that her mother Queen Arianna had a plaque hanging in her royal bedroom that spoke to so many quarters of the sweet young woman's heart.

"That was a truly inspiring tale! You must really love your cousins to come all this distance for them. I'd like to meet little Anna! She sounds so peppery! And beautiful Queen Elsa sounds amazing!" Elisabeth shares Rapunzel's enthusiasm as the fast-talking girl finishes her moving story of friendship and forgiveness.

"I, for one, would like to meet your husband. It's a shame that he's not here now. That rascal of a thief certainly can get the proverbial ball rolling. He sounds thrilling." With a low whistle, boisterous Lujza had no qualms about showing her interest for Flynn Rider in all his deceitful cunning to his little wife. Her one track mind approved of Flynn's pivotal role of purloining ancient treasures in order to protect the new family he had been welcomed into, after she enjoyed an enlightening ride about monsters, mermaids, the Snow Queen and the rulers of Arendelle for a reunion with their little girls, with romances of their own.

"Yes, he is." With a blush upon her face, mingled with a little wifely jealousy, Rapunzel was glad that her beloved Eugene was not here to receive Lujza's outward admiration.

Just then, Pascal returns from his scouting foray with a terrified expression on his charcoal black complexion.

"Pascal?! What is it?!" The brown haired Princess whispers as her green eyes turn to share a frightened gaze with Elisabeth and Gloria. They all watch the chameleon silently mimic for them to follow his quick charted path deep into the infrastructure of the dark dungeon ahead.

Racing quick two steps at a time, Rapunzel scurries after Pascal, passing the lit torch to Lujza. The two older woman weren't doing so bad a job keeping up after their new friend's frantic race down the steps.

When they reach the base's landing, Elisabeth stoops pick up the pieces of Olaf. The slippery snowperson had slipped down the last few concrete steps and fallen apart after Rapunzel whooshed straight past, knocking the silly snowman offkilter in her wake.

 _It's so dark! Anna will be so scared down here if she's alone! I hope they kept Kristoff with her_!

Rapunzel continues down into the dungeon catacomb on Pascal's trail like a speedy ferreting rabbit, leaving Lujza and Elisabeth and Olaf in her dust.

The panicked Prussian beauty quietly moves through the darkness with only Pascal's constant movement catching her frenzied eyes. The closer she gets through the pitch darkness of the dungeons, the stranger and more anxious the perspicacious girl was feeling. It was as if –

 _Eugene_ _?!_

Even in the ebony pitch darkness, her heart stopped in her chest as she shudders in pure fear, Rapunzel's eyes zone right in on her man's downed form where he lay in a pile on the pitiless ground of the cell.

"Eugene!" The girl's muffled scream beneath her covered mouth holds back a high-pitched mumbled whisper at the terrifying sight of her beloved lying motionless on the cold stone ground within the dungeon's cell bars.

Pascal leans on top of Eugene's shoulders, shaking him periodically, even going to the extreme of that old ear-in-tongue trick that usually wakes Eugene up in a jiffy. But it was without any positive results this time.

"No no no no no, Eugene! I'm going to get you out of there! Please get up! Get up! Get up!' Rapunzel longed to run to her husband, but there were was a row of cold prison cell bars in between the lovers' path.

As Rapunzel trips over herself in her haste to get closer to him, the iron bars were in the way. The Princess of Corona sinks to her knees, shaking the cell bars and fumbling her tingling fingers with her ring of lockpick tools at the latched keyhole lock of the cell door. Rapunzel's lyrical voice continuously repeats the one phrase to his unconscious – _perhaps dead_ \- ears…

"Rapunzel?! Is that you!" Anna whispers in the cell next to Flynn's, sure she had suddenly heard her cousin's broken voice in a panic suddenly in the darkness of this damp dungeon they were entrenched in. The ginger girl strains her eyes into the bleak stillness to see if she was right.

"Anna! What happened Eugene?! Is he…?" Rapunzel was openly weeping as her fingers were shaking so hard at the lockpick that it was clanging uselessly against the bars and keyhole more than deftly utilizing her sleight-of-hand technique that her love had taught her.

"I don't know. Those bad men in black hoods are working for some crazy, old crackpot, who called him 'bait', whatever that meant. They just showed up and dumped Eugene in there. It's been over half an hour and I've been calling him to wake up but he doesn't seem to hear me! We've been trying to reach him, but even Kristoff's long arms can't get that far…" Words spilling out in a jumbled heap with sympathetic tears, Anna had been so doggedly trying to reach through the bars that her bruised and skinned bare arms were scratched up from the sharp peeling metal iron bars that were between her cell and the one holding Eugene.

Overcome, Anna lays her head onto Kristoff's shoulder. Kristoff, silently listening, had been rubbing and massaging Anna's beat-up forearms with a feeling of helplessness as his nature Wind Whisperer skills did him little good against these double thick stone walls. Even the mountain man's sheer strength was useless against the well forged iron bars that were centuries-old, and it left him feeling powerless.

"I've just got to get this cell door open, and he'll be all right!" The tears streaming down Rapunzel's contorted face as she was still trying to see the light at the end of this dark tunnel, were making it impossible for the distraught girl to be successful at her lockpicking task properly, her mind unable to focus.

"Rapunzel? Did you find your cousins?" Elisabeth asks in her lovely lilting Belgian accent slowed down by the extra cargo of 40 pound Olaf in her satchel. Then a huffing and puffing for all the physical effort of running down numerous stair steps of the spiraling staircase, Princess Lujza finally catches up as well, leaning on the shoulder of her sister-in-law Princess Elisabeth.

"What's wrong, _minha Querida_ (my Honey)?" In her native Portuguese, Gloria Lujza had the shrewdness to see that the girl was falling apart in a puddle of tears. She grips the shoulders of her young Prussian friend who was having a meltdown on the ground, as she watches Princess Rapunzel desperately attempt to pick the seemingly impenetrable shackle lock through her hot tears.

"Eugene… That's my Eugene in there." Almost insensible to speak, Rapunzel chokes up with the sniffles and sobs wracking her tremulous chest until she was blinded by her building fears. Shaking, Rapunzel's digits were woefully ineffectual, much to her tearful chagrin.

"Eugene…I'm coming…"

"Stop that, Rapunzel. Shh, shh. _Por favor, nao chore._ (please, don't cry)" Lujza consoles and covers Rapunzel, pulling the trembling girl's shaking form to her ample chest with a big sisterly hug that was almost motherly.

"You can't be his rock to help him if you're falling apart, mon chere. Faith before doubt, my girl." Princess Elisabeth was as wise as she was lovely, patting her compassionate hand to Rapunzel's flushed cheek as she wipes back the girl's frantic overemotional tears.

Olaf, for his part, offers a toothy smile full of hope up at Rapunzel at her side.

Rapunzel sucks in a deep breath and nods with a small smile for the pair of helpful older women and the small snowman's encouragement. With one last squeeze of their hands, Princess Rapunzel lets go of Lujza and Elisabeth's with a grateful gleam in her eyes for her new friends.

Rapunzel then tries to connect with Anna's hopeful ones from where the Arendellian princess was peeking out between Kristoff's ample biceps that she had been hiding her upset face within.

Steeling her renewed focus, Rapunzel picks up the dropped ring of lockpick tools from Princess Elisabeth's offered hand. Choosing the correct thin metallic tool, the young pregnant woman feels her way through the tumblers as if she was swimming through them. Just like her Eugene taught her to, until she found their weak spot and persuaded the lock to click open as she had practiced with her lover on weeks of endless honeymoon nights…

"Eugene!" Throwing open the cell door, Rapunzel's flies upon the waves of her love to the man who was sprawled out, down on his beautiful unconscious face across the floor. With great effort, Rapunzel lifts Eugene's dead weight up from the hard stone ground, turning him over to cradle his out-cold head onto her lap.

Leaning her cheek down to his chest, Rapunzel listens carefully for a heartbeat, but her own heart pounding in her ears was so loud that it was too difficult to distinguish for sure if the beats belonged to her or her dreadfully still, cold husband.

Her green eyes wide and fearful that she couldn't detect any movement from his cool, still body, Rapunzel's stare darts back to Elisabeth's as the older women joins them in the cell.

 _I believe that you would never leave me,_ _Eugene_ _. I believe that my love – our love – our dream won't end this way… I've got it together now. I will be strong for both of us because our babies need their Daddy…_

The tears well up in Rapunzel's eyes, running down her cheeks, as, with the precious moisture saturating her lips, Princess Rapunzel kisses Flynn Rider's lips that were barely registering a heart rate.

With all prayers in her heart, quiet up to now, Princess Anna begins to sing one of her Mama's favorite church hymns. It was from the German Lutheran _Heilagvisene_ (holy songs) that Queen Idun had learned when spending time in Prussia whenKing Friedrich was courting her sister, soon to be his Queen, Arianna, " _Gesangbuch de Herzegl_ ". ("I Sing the mighty power of God")

 _"I Sing the mighty power of God, that made the mountains rise. That spread the flowing seas_ _abroad, and built the lofty skies."_ Remembering her Mama's words as glorious as Isaac Watts' timeless melody was sung in her soprano voice during their private church services, Anna softly sings the German hymn from her own cradled place within her Kristoff's strong embrace _._ _'I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day; The moon shines full at God's command, and all the stars obey.'_

Rapunzel, feeling the hopes of her friends, hearing Anna's moving song in her ears, delivers to her husband all the unfailing love she has held for him in her heart for over five years.

A warm and truly bright love that sparked from their own amazing journey had lasting embers of that healing power of golden light still slightly swirling in her body.

Perhaps that magic healing light was stoked to be reborn in the double twin magic blossoming inside of her. The mystical flower that touched the lives of both Rapunzel and Anna's mothers had been passed down by the magic flower's abilities upon their own special births.

 _'There is not a plant or flower below but makes Thy glories known. And clouds arrive and tempests blow, by order of thy throne."_ Rapunzel, through the loving passionate kiss filled with every ounce of her love for the closed and conniving man she met as Flynn Rider, but who came riding into her heart and brought her out of her shell and into the light as heroic and true Eugene Fitzherbert.

Rapunzel hears Anna's heartfelt song light up something from inside of her.

It was as if that little shining golden sparkle left within the Princess of Corona's body had been bolstered by her cousin in conjunction to sing a duet in perfect harmony. After all, Anna's mother Idun, too, had shared in partaking of the special golden Rapunculus blessed blossom, once upon a time…

Kristoff silently wonders in awe of the repeating wonders of God's Creation. He gasps when his intuitive, sensitive soul - that his little Feistypants owned a great part of - could sense the golden streams of healing energy swirling through the cool stale air of the dungeon.

The magic golden streams of light were directed towards Rapunzel and Eugene, and were coming from… his Anna.

 _You are your mother's daughter…_

Kristoff smiles, seeing spry Queen Idun's energetic personality in her younger daughter. The Ice Harvester supports his true love for all the brightness and golden sunshine that she added to his world.

 _"While all that borrow life from Thee is ever in Thy care. Everywhere that we can be, God is present there."_ And as Anna of Arendelle's deep soaring soprano sets to the aria-like religious strophic song to quietly fill the dungeon cells, Princess Rapunzel devotes every ounce of her love into her kiss to her breathless, comatose Eugene…

 _ **Ungh!**_

And her true love's kiss really does bestow upon her dashing Prince that revitalizing breath of life that the overdosed rogue benefits under the focused, tender, constant streams of a passionate kiss transferred between their conjoined mouths.

When Rapunzel finally lifts her lips from her handsome husband's, her besotted eyes were rewarded that her Eugene was not only breathing, but he was smiling up at her.

More like smirking.

"So, Blondie. You still can't get enough of me, eh? Talk about a tongue lashing, Mrs. Fitzherbert." Eugene comes to from his overdose of tranquilizers with this trademark flirtatious bravado as his eyes flutter open from where he was lying on his bride's lap.

"Eugene! I was so worried that I'd lost you. Again." The young woman runs her hands through her love's dark mass of hair while her other hand pets his thick, way-past-5 o'clock-shadow stubbly chin and jaw with tender affection.

"I'm like a bad penny, always keep turning up. So you're stuck with me, kid. Besides, I told you I'm not ever walking out on you again. Especially if you keep showering me with kisses like that every morning to look forward to." His arm lazily slung above his head, Eugene tickles Rapunzel's chin in that soft vulnerable spot that always made her immediately giggle in that adorable way he adored. Relieved, she feels his now normally beating heart close to hers again.

"Thank God! Reunited true love is so beautiful." Elisabeth remarks with a happy hug from Olaf as they surround the couple doing a little dance.

" _Incriviel_! (Amazing! in Portuguese)" Watching in rapt attention the romantic scene, Lujza cries out rather loudly as Anna claps her hands in joy and Olaf bounces around her chanting! "Hooray!"

"Maybe we should try to keep it down, guys. Those villains may be anywhere. So we should try to beat it as quick as we can before they come back around." Having his fill of drooling on Eugene, logical Kristoff didn't want to be the party pooper and break up anyone's fun and well-deserved relief, but he still had that nasty sense biting at the back of his head that the evil minions were around and not so far away.

"Okay, Muscles. Give me a minute to catch my breath and I'll have you out of there faster than you can say Jack –" Starting to flex his magic fingers, Flynn Rider, after enjoying being babied by his loving wife for a few ephemeral moments, glances over from his delightfully prone position to where Kristoff and Anna were still locked up behind a cell door.

"You should just rest, Eugene! I'm on it." A breathless Rapunzel, emboldened by her earlier success in the larceny skill department, invigorated by her Eugene's thrilling kiss, leaps up to her feet. She swings around her confident, deft fingers her own personal ring of lockpicks that she was rather proud of with her newly tested skills.

Eugene's head would have been partially bounced to the cold hard floor had a squished Pascal not taken the brunt of his concussed spill in Rapunzel's enthusiasm when she jumped up just then.

Princess Gloria Lujza doesn't allow the loss to grow beneath her heels. The large framed woman was immediately was at his side to lift Eugene's dizzy head to her lap now, making herself known, all in one enthusiastic breath.

 _"Ola, Lindo_. (Hello, Gorgeous)" In a sultry voice, the Portuguese woman says approvingly to the thief who gazes up at her obvious attentions in gulped trepidation.

 _Not so bad with the ladies… Yep, you still got it, Rider._

"And…you are?" Flynn asks, trying to think his way out of the sticky situation without getting beat up again by any of the parties present.

"Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal, the wife of Prince Peiter of the Southern Isles. So this is our dear little Rapunzel's handsome thief, at last. I am _so very pleased_ to meet you." Dripping with flirtatious wiles, Lujza introduces herself with a coy smile down at the man cradled in her arms.

"Uhh…Yeah…Nice to meet you… I think I'd better be getting up now, sweet cheeks. I've learned to stay away from the wives of powerful princes, for my own health. You'll understand." With little by way of equilibrium, Eugene stands up a little too quickly and his wobbly, weak legs don't support him.

His talented Rapunzel squeaks, losing her focus on the cell door lock just as she was about to clinch it open.

" _Esta tudo ben_ (It's all right.) I've got him. Ooh, this is nice." Lujza pets Eugene's hair, as his face falls against her ample chest. The woman's hands liberally rub up and down the thief's wide chest with a sigh over his heavenly obliques as he was stumbling against her as she looks down at him with approving, appreciative eyes.

"Storbror! Please behave yourself! We don't have a moment to waste with your indiscretions." The astounded, velvety smooth voice emerging from the darkness was both a shock and a joy for all of the feminine ears in this dark deep section of the dungeon to hear.

"Hans?!" With as much pensiveness as elation in her trembling voice, her breath catching in her speechless throat for once, Anna's narrowed eyes attempt to peer through the black darkness in incredulity.

"Anna?" Hans' stunned green eyes that had been fastidiously scanning through the bleakness of the underground tunnel beneath the moat of Egeskov that led from the Chapel to these subterranean dungeons, was flabbergasted to catch sight of the unexpected young woman within the dungeon cell.

"What are you doing here? Why are you – how could you – I don't understand." When he first arrived, in his naval officer, no nonsense, take-charge command mode, this new unknown causes the usually self-assured, posh man to be reduced to stuttering. Hans runs an astounded hand through his red hair, shaking his puzzled, flustered head at the inconceivable reason for this Norwegian Princess to be present here in Egeskov.

Losing his normal confident composure at the sight of not only Anna, but Rapunzel and Kristoff as well in the dungeon cell, Hans is stopped dead in his purposeful tracks, flabbergasted.

"Well, we're not here for our health, buster!" Anna covers up her raging emotions with a snappy retort. Then, the confused girl softly says to her fumbling cousin. "Hurry up with that lock, Rapunzel!"

"Please allow me, Princess Rapunzel." Prince Hans Westergaard appears on the opposite end of the endless black corridor that ran beneath the entire complex and Egeskov Castle fortress into its dungeon. He addresses first Anna, then Rapunzel, then gives the pair of Princesses standing behind a sweeping, gentlemanly bow.

"Oh, Hans! You're okay!" The new tears now in relief for her missing brother-in-law whom they been so desperately seeking causes Rapunzel's eyes again to well up as she looks over her shoulder, and that made it virtually impossible for her to pick this second cell door lock competently.

But she didn't have to bother, for Prince Hans adroitly places his slender hands atop hers and aids her in feeling their way through the keyhole lock, until it's rustling of tumblers slip open with a rewarding click. It was even faster than she ever remembered Eugene guiding it with her, too.

Giving her hands one final squeeze, Hans reassuringly gazes down into Rapunzel's emotional pools up at him at the tall svelte man leans over her shoulder to assist her.

That's when the cell doors are thrust open from the inside by the impatient, impish, inhabitant inside who held a lot of pride and prejudice concerning this particular odious man.

 ** _SLLAA-AAPPP!_**

"How could you just leave Elsa behind like that, without even saying goodbye?!" Everyone is shocked when instead of gratitude for freeing them or relief to see that the thought-dead Prince was alive again, spicy Anna skips out from the cell to full force slap Hans right across his unsuspecting face, causing him to stumble backwards from the unexpected blow.

And then the spontaneous girl shocks them all again a second time when the fiery Princess of Arendelle's livid flaring eyes, angry grimace and puckered lips then transform into a wobbling, almost crying expression full of soft regret.

"I'm glad you're not dead." Looking on the verge of tears, Anna rubs Hans' cheek as if seeking for the warmth that she last saw him lacking, quickly planting a quick kiss on the same red cheek she just afflicted, to make it all better.

Anna and Hans stare and blink at one another several times in shock at the confusion of sentiments passing between them.

 ** _SLLA-APP!_**

"Don't you know you almost died?! Don't you ever do that again, you big dumb stupid redheaded cluck!" Embarrassed by her over-emotive first reaction to finding Hans Westergaard still alive and kicking; flushed, she now breaks away with one more resounding smack against Hans' other stunned, and just as equally red, cheek.

"Or I'll…I don't know, have to kill you or something!" At the end of a near by stolen knight's broadsword, Anna spits out the contradictory 'threat' right in the face of the Danish man that she once loved, then hated, was grateful to, then worried over, then despised, and now…

"Princess Anna." Suddenly Hans bows to his knees at her feet, taking Anna's shaking fists enshrouded in his tense hands.

"For all the past mistakes and unbelievable wrong I horrendously subjected you and your dearest sister to - from the first moment we met to every moment thereafter - I can never beg your forgiveness enough. But, even if you, justifiably, find me too unworthy to gain your mercy for my deplorable actions, please, I beg of you to heed my warning now, for your own safety." Hans genuinely apologizes in his polite, well-bred manner, eager to keep the girl he had once wronged safe if he could help it. The true, remorseful sincerity in his pleading eyes pervaded the eerie darkness to connect with Anna's irked, bewildered ones that didn't quite know what emotion to apply to Prince Hans right now.

"You may beg, but it doesn't mean I'm going to do it." Nose up in the air at the suppliant man petitioning at her feet, Anna's puffed up pride answers with that twisted lip she always gave when she knew she should be benevolent, but the ginger cheekiness in her refused to relinquish her saucy, impertinent tongue so easily, as she awkwardly tugs her hands free from Hans' plaintive grip.

" _'Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the essence of love?'"_ Unaware of how deep the backstory ran between Hans and Anna, Princess Elisabeth whispers a quote from her favorite Jane Austen romance novel to Rapunzel from where the Belgian woman was wrapping Olaf back up in his bearskin packet as she helps Lujza support Eugene who was still slightly queasy on his feet. "Your piquant little cousin certainly puts on an interesting show, my dear."

"You could say that again." Was Kristoff Bjorgman amused or peevish at Anna's outward display towards one Mr. Hans Westergaard? It was difficult to tell from the blond mountain man's quiet, yet pointed tone as he stands from the weakened cell bar that he had been strong arm wrestling with for the past hour. The shirtless muscleman had almost wrenched it out when that redhaired _rescuer_ arrived and took Kristoff's thunder away, as usual.

"Oh! Another _homem_ _bonito_! (handsome man!)" Princess Lujza was still taking pleasure in caressing Eugene's captured chest, with her eyes still agape at Peiter's much sought after – _and apparently controversial in his popularity with the ladies_ – little brother kneeling to the ground in supplication to the little princess.

And now her mouth begins to water at the sight of the third gorgeous man entering in her midst as Kristoff Bjorgman stands up to his full six-foot five height and exits the cell.

Lujza felt quite warm from Kristoff's so apparently masculine display of his impressive pecs and ripped eight-pack abs. The Norwegian man had removed his twisted up shirt and used it for a garrote type of leverage implement in his well-timed attempts to dislodge the cell bars holding them.

The salivating Portuguese woman drops Eugene like a hot potato, but luckily Rapunzel was there this time to shoulder the woozy man up as Lujza's dazzled eyes now greedily drink Kristoff's manly network of chest musculature as he exits the cell.

"Thank you for your brave rescue of the captives, Princesses, but we will take over from here, lest you be missed and cause further suspicion to be raised. Once again, I must impress upon you the urgency of our departure to escape further retribution, gentlemen."

Rising to his full height, Hans collects himself, exchanging a nod with Kristoff. The Ice Harvester stoops down into his cell to lift Aged P – who had snoozed through this all – from the concrete cold bench.

A penitent Hans gives proud faced Anna another weak besseching smile, seeking forgiveness, as Pascal leaps onto Vise Admiral Westergaard's friendly, familiar shoulder.

"Pascal? I would ask you to use your impeccable sense of direction to escort these lovely ladies back out from this dungeon catacomb the same way you came in." Prince Hans, a born leader who quickly adapted to every available possibility at his command, turns to the small green lizard on his shoulder who salutes and crawls down the man's tall frame.

Hans then turns his attention back to Anna, trying to contritely meet her stubborn eyes.

"Princess Anna, I believe it would be wise if you accompanied Princess Rapunzel and the others back up into the relative safety of Egeskov Castle. Since you are now marked as a prisoner, you may be recognized by the Captain of the Guard there, so I advise you, perhaps, amidst the festivities of the King's birthday celebration, to disguise yourself as a domestic? You would be the first royal lady who attempted such a fantastic farce…I hope? After all, it is just yourself and Princess Rapunzel here in Egeskov…right?" Dangling the deliberate sentence in search of vindication that he was incorrect on this point that had been gnawing on his mind, Hans vaguely refers back to his imaginary Ice Queen whom he fancied had been posing discreetly as a maid, using her powers to infiltrate the kingdom in her artful brilliance.

 _That could not be reality. I am a delusional fool._

 _But we are all fools in love…_

Though, deep inside his heart, with the evidence of Anna, Rapunzel, Kristoff, Pascal and Olaf here, Hans was starting to doubt his doubts. But right now, he hadn't time to consider much beyond inwardly quoting Jane Austen's immortal words.

"Absolutely not! Hmph! **You** play the maid! I think **_you_** would be better at it than me, you rosewater sailor. You've got nice enough legs." Deriding the man across from her, Anna saucily grumbles under her breath, elbowing past Hans as she vividly remembers a seemingly effete young man whose tight trousers could dance quite a foxtrot, and cook up a dandy crepe.

Hans chooses to ignore her mocking taunt and continues on his assiduous undertaking.

"Ahem. I will lead the men out through the tunnel under Egeskov's moat through the chapel's exit to their freedom. Please say nothing of this meeting you have witnessed, Princess Elisabeth, Princess Lujza. Count Rügen may make your life unpleasant should he ever discover that you have associated with me." Vise Admiral Westergaard felt responsible to take charge in this terrible mess where his inside knowledge of the castle, estate and players within it may prove valuable assets.

"But, Prince Hans, perhaps we can speak on your behalf—" Elisabeth begins to say in sympathy, holding out a bough of pity for the poor disinherited youngest brother of her husband's clan Westergaard.

"I am nothing anymore to this royal house other than a disgrace. I wish for you fine ladies not to be stigmatized due to any of my indiscretionary actions." Eloquent Hans gives the pair of intrigued princesses an affable nod as they turn to follow Rapunzel's lead.

"You made us a promise, Eugene." Meaningfully with a palm to her full stomach, Rapunzel whispers to her injured smirking husband. "Don't forget it."

With her passionate kiss still lingering on his lips, Flynn Rider waves a fond farewell to his less insane wife, who was pregnant and should have enough sense to keep safe.

Pascal and Rapunzel lead an astonished Elisabeth and impressed Lujza back up to the castle's upper floors.

But there was one remaining little lady standing her ground who never did take orders, especially not any coming from this red-headed individual.

While Hans was giving instruction to the other acquiescent princesses, Anna had clandestinely snuck a ways down the hall (under Kristoff's constant, bewildered surveillance from the distance) to one of those empty knight suits. She had purloined one of the metal clad heroes of one of his most valuable possessions.

"Wait! There is **no way** I'm **not** going with you guys! If there's danger to face, then I'm there, too!" Deftly displaying the long broadsword that was almost as big as she, Anna shows off her Papa's fencing training through the sliced thick air. After nearly taking off Pascal's curly tail on Rapunzel's ducking shoulder, she parries, feints, thrusts and lunges with focused precision of her foil until Anna Bjorgman was pointing it directly at Hans Westergaard's Adam's Apple.

 ** _GULP!_**

"I would NEVER argue with a ginger armed with a sharp tongue and even sharper sword if I were you, Lillebror." Eugene whispers from the side of his mouth his personal opinion to Hans, and shares a shrug with Kristoff, who had given up trying to protect Anna for her own good a long ago.

 _"'What are men to rocks and mountains?! Wisdom, thy name is woman!'"_ Waving her intrepid blade before Hans' almost as sharp nose, Anna imagines herself quoting some famous literary saying, but the funny, un-scholarly girl gets her proverbs and wise sayings all mixed up.

But it was close enough to get her point across as she flaunts her swinging sword and sassy smirk before the trio of men, stunned, fearful and mesmerized by Anna of Arendelle's every daring maneuver.

"Come on boys! Follow me! You too, Red!" Not having one inkling of where she was going, what she was doing here, or who she was fighting against, righteous, crazy Anna, with a teasing glint in her eye, especially directed at a speechless Hans, would be fearless in the defense of justice for even an innocent elderly man she just met.

Exchanging glances, the mountain man, the sneak thief, the old jeweler and the Søværnet officer all stare at the carrot-top princess in braids.

Full of raw, stimulated energy, Anna stands on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on Kristoff's surprised, pouty lips. Then she runs headlong down into the subterranean tunnel corridor that ran beneath the Egeskov moat, with no fear and with her beautiful boy's motivational kiss on her inspired lips.

"I love crazy." With a quirky, grateful smile that he was making some progress on the Anna front etched on his handsome features, Prince Hans' three simple words said it all for every one of them as they watch Anna's energy take flight.

Swallowing his pride as Anna had let go of her forgone prejudice, Hans is the first to uncomplainingly follow the courageous princess down the dark, claustrophobic tunnel where there was no light at the other end, save for Princess Anna's glimmering golden medallions on her little winged shoes.

* * *

Søværnet– Royal Danish Navy

rosewater sailor – effeminate dandy of a man

* * *

 _'What are men to rocks and mountains?!'_

Isn't that a magnificent summation of the male species as a whole? Don't mess with the legendary Jane Austen, or Anna of Arendelle when she's in a pickly mood – and armed with a knight's sword!

I thought some quotes from the legendary Jane Austen's epic novel 'Pride and Prejudice' would play well here at Anna & Hans' ' _reunion'_ (the 2005 movie of the novel is one of my favorite films of all time!)

What did you think about it?! Anna not only slapped Hans once. She did it twice! And than the pure-hearted feisty-pants felt bad and kissed him! Whew! The whirlwind of Princess Anna's emotions is like a hurricane!(take care for Hurricane Hermine, my friends!)

The princesses had some roles in this chapter as the adventure moves along!

Please review!

See you soon!

God bless!

HarukaKou


	19. Chapter 19 - Something There

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 19**

 **"Something There"**

Princess Sophie Amalia of the Netherlands peers her coiffed winged head out into the darkness of the deep night enveloping the Ladegarden stable complex with fearful trepidation.

The twenty-something year old tawny brown haired young mother was never known for being as bold or beautiful or adventurous as the other showy princesses and ostentatious glowing royal ladies she was perpetually surrounded by.

The Dutch Princess was more the shy, unnoticed and unremarkable, introverted type who enjoyed sitting at home and reading a good book far more than exploring the wild outdoors or enjoying the arts in other people's company. But her marriage two years ago to Prince Franz of the Southern Isles changed all of that when the tenth in line Prince of Denmark had hurriedly been arranged as a suitable marriage partner for the breath-taken young orphaned Princess as soon as she came of age.

Her older brother became ruler of the Netherlands and Amalia was quickly married off to Prince Franz by their royal handlers.

The Danish prince was as unmannered and course and untamed as his petite Dutch princess was sweet, shy and dull. The pair was as different as night and day, but little of personality compatibility mattered in royal arranged nuptials.

Princess Sophie Amalia was only eighteen when she wed Prince Franz, who was fourteen years her senior at thirty-two years of age.

The unruly long haired son of the Danish King had seen so much of the wilds of Africa and Asia and beyond that, the well-built physique and physical stature Franz grew up bloodthirsty to prove himself as the nation's most renowned hunter. Prince Franz's rugged good looks and rough and tumble attitude made him the ideal for rugged manliness that Sophie Amalia had been sorely lacking a good example of with her brother, and father before him, both having a penchant for more effeminate distractions.

Prince Franz, with his tanned, well-toned, beefy musculature had a lustiness for life that timid little Sophie both admired – and feared.

The Dutch girl, just coming out of her shy teenage years, tried her best to accommodate and be a dutiful wife to her new husband in their allotted Gråsten 16th Century Hunting Castle, but far from civilization in the northern Denmark fortress in Zealand, Sophie Amalia was often on the receiving end of her hot tempered husband's angry backhand.

Especially after their first child – as all the Westergaard princes sired thus far - turned out to be yet another disappointing female in the line of Egeskov, instead of the much sought after son.

Prince Franz often took out his dissatisfaction on his wife during the night. It was the fault of the stiff liquor drink that her Franz regularly indulged in after an afternoon spent hunting on the grounds of his Middle Ages ancient castle which his father assigned to him to be lord over upon his advantageous, unifying marriage to the Princess of the Netherlands.

Princess Sophie Amalia had the temperament of a person to blame herself for being inadequate to calm her vigorous husband's robust needs when the natural born hunter was in a rage at some lack of good weather for the hunt or in frustration at the beast who had gotten away. Franz often returned to the Castle in such a sour mood that he drank off his frustrations the remainder of the night.

The savage hale and hearty man's wild temperament soon took out his problems on poor defenseless Amalia when they two were alone at night.

But the quiet, long-suffering Dutch Princess had faith so much that God would protect her and her child and somehow tame her husband's heart. Sophie Amalia believed the Lord would bring him to care for her as she and her little girl would be safe under His protection from any serious harm at the rough hands of the spoiled, displeased with his tenth in line lot in life prince whom she had married.

And despite it all, quite alarmingly, Amalia had fallen in love with her beast of a mate. Perhaps, it was beneath his big-game hunter, rough-tough exterior, Sophie Amalia could sense her unassuming 'Prince Charming' was hiding somewhere deep down beneath his feral passions. Prince Franz was simply lacking a mother's hand and had never been taught to be soft and tender with the delicate species called ' _woman'_.

The young princess of the Netherlands may not have been gifted with extreme beauty nor a winning outgoing nature that made her popular with acquaintances, but she had a heart of gold bigger than most. When her tiny little two-year-old daughter, Petunia, woke up in the night crying out for her lost favorite stuffed pony toy that her craft-skilled mother had made for her, shy Princess Sophie determined to fetch it for her only child, even if it meant foraging into strange territories in the deep of night.

But as she poked around the darkened Ladegården stables' converted nursery that Petunia had been playing in with her multitude of cousins earlier, Sophie Amalia found a pony of another kind.

This living and breathing one was murmuring unpleasant noises and breathless grunts and obviously in utter pain.

The Dutch young woman who had trained as an unlikely nurse during the Napoleonic conflict with her dear mother that she herself, although merely a little girl then, could not ignore the painful murmurings of any creature.

The shapely legs of Princess Sophie's fine figure that did not match her not so becoming face carried her from the nursery section of the complex into the rear of the unused equestrian stables.

There, she had tucked the stuffed pony toy of her toddler's into her bosom as she selflessly kneeled to this strewn hay, dirty back-stable floor to begin to tend to Maximus' lacerated and cut form.

"Shh, my darling, help is here." Sophie Amalia whispers softly to the downed steed who was writhing on the cold ground in agony of not only his seriously scored shoulders that the ropes had harshly cut into his neck quarters until his pure white coat was stained and caked with his own violently spilled blood, but the elephant dosed sedative made it virtually impossible for the plucky Percheron to rise to his feet, however valiantly he tried.

"Hush now, dear. ' _Hortsik, paardje rijdennaar de stal; paardje_ _kan_ _daar haver krijgen._ '" ('Hop, shoo, go, horsy trotting to the stable; little horse eats oats and barley.')

Singing her Dutch children's lullaby, the twenty-one year old brunette was neither repulsed by the sight of blood, nor afraid of the large Percheron's hind legs kicking and thrashing on the stable ground where he was laid out. A trained field nurse in her childhood paid off for having an outdoorsy brute of a wild rugged hunter who always came home with scrapes and cuts and wounds. This Dutch princess had certainly seen her share of injuries.

Sophie Amalia had courage to face and her own wounds to self-doctor in the mornings after each drunken night at home left more than a few physical bruises and bumps.

" _Rest your head, God will take care of thee_." Princess Sophie's tender song lullabies into Maximus' ear as the stubborn horse, tipsy with sedatives, struggles for consciousness. The Princess rubs her caring, mild hands gently over him with wet cloths from the cool bucket of medicated water that she had mixed and drawn from the stable's interior well.

Under the young woman's quiet ministrations, Maximus begins to calm down his feverish behavior as her tender song reminds him of Princess Rapunzel, whose sweetness always treated him with babying kindness when everyone else looked at the large muscular horse with fear.

* * *

On the other end of this vacated stable, Princess Hermine was pacing around the open hatch lid entrance to the dungeon with her sister-in-law, Princess Adelaide. The older woman had been primly sitting with her hands folded on her lap on a bale of hay that Rapunzel, Lujza and Elisabeth had moved to reveal the secret entrance to the underground lair of the vast dark hidden network of dungeons that laid beneath the depths of Egeskov's mysterious Castle.

"Hermine. I wish you would stop that pacing. You're making me nervous. And it is a waste of your energy." The Austrian princess, with her neat chignon dark black-brown hair, reprimands her younger sister-in-law with a sardonic smile. There wasn't much that could cause clinical, level-headed, composed Adelaide to lose her equanimity.

The half Italian, half Austrian princess had raised three daughters, practically on her own, enough to be hardened by now. The cool Austrian side tempered exquisitely the passionate part of the Italian woman's emotions in check. With her husband absent for most of their ten year marriage, independent Adelaide of Austria relied on no one but herself.

Now, on the other hand, timid Princess Hermine of Waldeck was her exact opposite. Not only did the younger, uncertain blonde rely on her overbearing husband constantly, her dithering unsure spirit permitted her domineering spouse control of her every move.

But the main difference was the fact that ditzy Hermine adored her Berte, despite his worrisome, acerbic nature.

As for Adelaide…well, let's just say, her distant relationship with her naval married partner possessed little by way of loving adoration.

"But, Adelaide! Don't you feel like something bad is about to happen?! Oh, just look at the goosebumps on my arms!" Simpleminded, clingy Hermine, who was a tad influenced by her over-exerted emotions, was somewhat drawn to the occult of the day. Hermine welcomed all visiting psychic soothsayers and fortunetellers that knocked on the doors of her Dragsholm Baroque Castle home when the carnivals and Gypsies came by in the western Island of Sjælland. Hermine snuck some covert meetings with them in the stable barn, even when her Prince Berte disdained the dirty heathen rabble and drove them from his land with threats of punishment and lawsuits from the studied lawyer.

"If you don't mind, I would rather not examine your bizarre bodily functions, Hermi –" An exasperated Adelaide watches the panicky German princess glance around the eerily dark stable at the strange guttural noises that Maximus was making – quite unknown to them - at the other end echoing through the large complex.

"Eek!" Then Hermine suddenly lets off a high-pitched squeal, causing the goosebumps to double on the frightened girl's arm as she shivers uncontrollably.

Adelaide clamps a palm over her sister-in-law's mouth, jumping up to silence the blonde with a rigid finger to her own alerted lips as Hermine grabs her tall and striking Italian sister-in-law by the neck abruptly.

The two of these polar opposites silently stare at the creaks and strange ghostly sounds echoing from the depths growing nearer and nearer that resonate from somewhere down below up to the surface stable that wildly unsettle the uptight blonde Princess of Waldeck.

"The ladies are just on their way back up." In a rushed whisper in Hermine's ear, Adelaide declares with more assurance than she felt. Her able hands make a quick grab for a half repaired saddle horn flat iron that the quick thinking astute woman had subconsciously noted hanging in the corner of the dark stable stall where she and Hermine were impatiently waiting.

"No! Leave this poor creature alone, I beg of you!"

As the tall Austrian woman and her petite blonde sister-in-law, close together, creep nearer to the underground opening, from the opposite end of the vast stable an often unheard voice cries out, breaking the dark gloaming silence of this well past 4 AM wee hour of the night.

Without a second thought, Princess Adelaide spins on her well turned heel to race boldly through the large stable's network of equestrian stalls. But that left Hermine to decide if she was to remain here in the dark secret back stall of the forbidding unoccupied rows of horse equipment, or if the mousy little girl was to follow her daring, independent friend into the frightening unknown.

"But Adelaide, we might get in trouble… What if Berte finds out…He'll kill me…" Chewing on her knuckle in her scared stiff way, whiny Hermine's imaginative exposed fright takes many forms in this unpleasant situation where she was left to make the decisions on her own.

Without her opinionated, smart Berte to tell her what to do, the indecisive girl felt about to cry. And when a creepy crawly dragon-like creature emerges from the dark pit, shifting the colors of its oddly shaped bug-eyed spiked head, Hermine just couldn't take it anymore.

"Don't leave me alone here!" In a pensive mumble, little Hermine softly wails before making a mad skittering dash after her dark-haired and daring counterpart.

* * *

"Please stop!" Princess Sophie Amalia of Netherlands pleads as she was protectively hugging her small framed body around Maximus' prone form on the floor.

Three dark caped and hooded men had abruptly appeared right out of nowhere and confronted the Dutch Princess as Sophie Amalia had been tending to Maximus, applying her special salve to the injured horse's splayed shoulders and raw lacerations on his neck and back, all while singing her tender lullaby.

Just as delirious Maximus seemed to be responding, this trio of Count Rügen's henchmen arrived to finish Maximus off, if the foreign Percheron horse wasn't already dead from his double dose shot of large game animal tranquilizers meant for huge beasts on the hunt in the African wilds such as rogue elephants or vicious predatory lions.

But this little waif, meekly spoken Princess wife of Prince Franz was giving these roughneck minions trouble. The callous, irreverent, cruel men cared not for any ailing animals nor wailing women with their soft bleeding hearts. Plus, they had all the same amount of respect for royalty that their Master held for his employer's spoiled rotten brats and annoying family.

"Step aside, woman! This vile creature belongs to an intruder here that the Master has ordered sentenced to death! So this beast must be put down with equal punishment." One of Rügen's men's voices talks down condescendingly to the not so appealing young woman with a sneer on his glaring face as he dismisses her.

"No! I won't let you wicked ruffians near him! Please! I can heal this poor horse!" The compassionate Princess of Netherlands begs for the forlorn horse, as Maximus raises his dizzy head to up to her gratefully.

"What do you think you're doing, little girl?! We have our orders to do away with and clear this problematic filth out of the Ladegården before sun up, so as not to disturb the King's festivities in the morning. The criminal invaders the horse brought here will enjoy the same swift sentence by daybreak, no doubt." The henchman scoffs, delighting in the thought of blood being drawn in a glorious beheading or two at dawn that his black soul thirsted for, after a quick trial for appearance's sake, of course, that they were to attend as their sadistic leader had already arranged with the Royal court.

In humorous fascination, each of the henchman arm themselves with whips and tackle used to subdue the big equine. The high-powered rifleman loads his 36 caliber, high-powered rifle with a 16 gauge bullet into the gun's barrel intending to blow out Maximus' brain once and for all disguised in the chapel clock's loud first early morn chime at the early 5 AM hour, soon to be upon them.

Of course, they did not expect to find this unwanted impediment standing in the way of their quick and dirty deed as the small, lone woman was denying them access to exterminate the horse under their strict orders and clean things up here.

Princess Wilhelmina Sophie Amalia of Netherlands was well aware that she may not have been gifted with oozing charm or apparent beauty by any means. But the honest woman had a beauty that ran far more than skin deep indeed. Though she had been battered and bruised herself countless times, the Dutch woman still owned the empathic heart of gold in her care of others around her that would not allow this poor vulnerable creature to come to more harm.

Amalia would stand for what was right, even if she was all alone in the world doing it. Though, right now, she was decidedly _not_ alone in the righteous sentiment for once, as Princess Adelaide of Austria rounds the corner of the Ladegården's third row stable.

"Get out of the way, you ugly wench!"

Adelaide arrives just in time to see her youngest sister-in-law be grabbed and crudely shoved aside by one of the angry men surrounding her, until the meager woman was crashed into the wooden gate of the stall door.

"Hermine. Go and fetch my husband. Prince Jürgenwill be smoking his pipe and taking his daily constitutional near the fjord edge, just as he does every morning at sun up. Tell him that ' _Adelaide_ _needs him. Hurry_.'" Composed even in a dire situation, the tall and imposing, Austrian Royal woman calmly commands the younger German Princess when Hermine scampers up behind her. In the dark stable, both princesses could just make out the dreadful scene of their brave sister-in-law standing alone against the unmistakably wicked men.

As a wide-eyed Hermine scrambles like a virtual rabbit out the side exit of the Ladegården, at her own clipped pace, Adelaide courageously moves forward towards the sounds of trouble at the other end of the stable complex.

 _ **SLAP**_!

Just in time to see poor Princess Sophie Amalia, obviously in defense of the injured, staunchly take another hard whack across the face by the hand of the other dark caped ruffian when she refused to let defenseless Maximus be shot by the angry men.

Adelaide recognized the trio as the cronies of that insipid Count Rügen, who always made her intuitive skin crawl whenever he was present in a room. The self-appointed overseer of Egeskov was constantly milling about this Castle whenever she and her husband came to visit the King on occasions for as far back as Adelaide could remember.

There was something deceitful about the odious man with the scarred face and malignant maladroit eyes always surveying her that gave Adelaide the impression of a carrion vulture, eager to devour any prey unfortunate enough to fall in his path.

Just as there was something about the quiet, unnoticed, meek Princess Amalia that this Rügen chosen, blackhearted man also found easy to victimize, knowing the modest inward female would never report them to anyone. Something about her vulnerabilities called for ruthless and wicked men to make her a punching bag it seemed.

But confident, independent, outspoken Princess Adelaide was a different matter entirely.

"Kindly remove your filthy plebian hands from harassing a Royal lady of this house. I am thoroughly startled and appalled at such uncultured behavior on Egeskov's grounds. You will be hearing a fierce reprimand from my husband shortly concerning your unacceptable behavior." The uppity Austrian Princess with the perfectly prim coiffed hair authoritatively demands to the sneering trio of vile menaces when she arrives.

Adelaide huffs and puffs after her fast-paced long legged dash to physically throw open the stall gate and take a stance between them and Amalia with her snobbish head held high. However, her ample heaving chest seemed to glean more attraction from the attackers than her instructions for removal thereof.

Violated by their sinister eyes in the darkness, Adelaide places a comforting hand around Amalia's shoulder. She pets her battered mousy brown head, standing in absolute solidarity with her surprisingly stout-hearted sister-in-law. Adelaide joins in the protest, indignantly defying the rabble to dare to strike either of them again.

"A fierce reprimand? Who from? Your missing in action Captain sailor boy?! I doubt he'd take your side, since he seems to prefer every sailor's mistress - the sea - more than you, Madame. Pity for such a waste of a fine figure of a woman. You probably never see much action from a real man, do you, lady?" With a salivating smirk, the younger, swarthy stubbled face shadowed by the pitch darkness taunts Adelaide verbally with the learned rumors that their boss Count Rügen acquired in his list of blackmail tools for each and every son of this Royal house over the years.

"How dare you address me in such a demeaning fashion! Begone from here!" Princess Adelaide feels affronted and violated by the sniggering minion's hungry eyes giving her a dressing down in many ways. Outwardly unruffled, though shaken inside, Princess Adelaide tries to brush him off with her dismissive nose held up in the air, everything inside her wishing to turn and leave.

With a nod to the others, the leader of the henchmen, seeing their job almost finished here, motions for the men to let the pair of females pass.

With a triumphant 'hmph!', the Austrian woman places her arm around Amalia's battered and bruised one, to lead her away. But with a small shake of her head, Sophie Amalia doggedly refused to budge. It made Adelaide ashamed to look into the steadfast eyes of the smaller woman who held an inner strength to not back down her protective stance in front of a wildly breathing, struggling to stay awake, still vulnerable Maximus.

"Looks like the ladies choose to stay here to keep us company, boys. Fine. You two can have your way with these irksome royal pains after we take care of our assignment. This annoying foul beast must be put down before the guests are disturbed by the horse or the bleeding heart women's shrill spoiling voices." The leader of the trio drawls low in his raspy voice as he signals with his raised rifle for the other two thugs to grab both Adelaide and Amalia simultaneously away from where they were shielding Maximus. With swift brute force, the henchman clamp hands over the mouths of the protesting females as the two strongmen subjugate wide-eyed Amalia and a kicking like mad to no avail Adelaide to drag the two women away from their protective position in front of Maximus.

The head henchman then raises his long breech-loading rifle again at the struggling horse's head right between the eyes as he awaits the quickening 5 o'clock chime from the clock tower drawing nigh…

* * *

 _ **Across the moat, near Egeskov Chapel…**_

Sitron's placid ears prick up as he squints his big brown eyes into the similarly toned early morning darkness that was just starting to part. The fjord horse had been patiently waiting for his reunited master, Prince Hans, to emerge and reappear from the hidden tunnel entrance that he had secreted down earlier. It was just like when they were younger, exploring the mysteries of Egeskov, shunned and alone, with only one another to rely upon.

Up top here for the past two hours or so, Sitron had been patiently keeping vigil for his boy, all while retaining a watchful eye out for his beauteous new mistress whom both horse and master sensed across the way after she disappeared into the Castle rear, hours ago.

The golden dun colored fjord horse was loyal to a fault to his lifelong fellow outcast and tried to emulate his Prince Hans in every way. That noble good breeding worked in Sitron's favor in ingratiating himself with Queen Elsa of Arendelle. The tall blonde sovereign had come to care for the abandoned stallion for that, among many other indecipherable reasons, for the past two years.

But it was another aspect of his beautiful redheaded boy's characterized driven years of training that Sitron was confronted with now.

His inexorable bravery was something Sitron, the proud Danish fjord horse, innately shared and took pride in. But when the golden-tan stallion's finely attuned ears monitoring Elsa's side of the moat started picking up woeful, pain-wracked cries of an unknown fellow equestrian in the vicinity of the Ladegården stables' torture section - _that Sitron was well acquainted with_ \- the horse's choices were put to the test.

To obediently stay here at his post as Hans instructed, or boldly strike out to discover if he could somehow assist the ailing creature on the other side of the moat? In the faint dawn's thick rising fog, the horse's mind was disconcerted at first until he closes his almond eyes, remembering his master's noble words heard in his head in repeated quoted line of Prince Hans' favorite 17th century poet, John Milton.

 _'All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued, Through Heaven's wide champain held his way; till Morn, Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand Unbarred the gates of light.' –_ John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XI

And without a second thought, the inspired brave steed takes to his anxious courageous hooves. Sitron spins around and races across the still water upon the ice bridge that he had crossed earlier to get here. However, the naïve horse was blissfully unaware that the ice's solidity had a time limit…

 _ **SPLASH!**_

Sitron begins to list and sink his confident, strident hooves into the moat on the crackling ice path that, after several hours, was no longer frozen solid enough to support his hundreds of pounds of weight. But poor, swifter on his feet than his mind Sitron wasn't to know that, was he?

 _ **WHINNY!**_

Hans' valiant – but not so brilliant – stallion looks down to the shattered, dissipating ice bridge that was practically nonexistent now beneath his innocently shocked hooves. Sitron was several feet out into the deep moat's midst, fully expecting Elsa's trusted Ice Queen powers to always keep him aloft. But when he realizes that wasn't the case this time, the fjord horse cries calls out for his best friend to help him out of yet another fine predicament that the headstrong stallion had gotten himself into.

His overwhelming last thought that he failed his Hans in every way imaginable when his dutiful Prince needed him most was far more terribly deplorable to a distraught Sitron than facing his own demise…

 _ **SWISH! SWOOP!**_

But fortunately for Sitron, a pair of rescuing reindeers had also been wisely observing the coming early morning sunrise over this section of the Danish royal estate in concern for their dear friends trapped somewhere beneath in the inaccessible dungeon.

Despite the fuzzy psychic communication reception due to Egeskov's double thick castle walls and even deeper dank dungeon depths that kept the Wind Whisperer far from his natural element of the stifled wind, Sven still sensed Kristoff's mind keeping incommunicado with his pensive buddy up here all the while.

Now that the mountain man assured his reindeer pal that an escape plan was set in action and they were all coming up somewhere near the exit by the Chapel's rear, Sven had immediately responded…

…and in doing so had serendipitously come across the flailing Sitron.

With quick thinking, Sven's teeth yanked out the sturdy mountaineer rope attached to a net that cautious Kristoff had stashed in the rangifer's side carrying pouch, ' _just in case'_. The grey-furred reindeer tosses the other end of the rope to Svala, his female partner instantly understanding what was necessary.

With a sweeping fly-by, the pair of airborne flying reindeer swoop down in perfect sync coordination as they semi-dive down to their strong legs into the moat and net the kicking and splashing about horse before Sitron completely sinks and is lost beneath the crests.

Using the raw power of their combined reindeer immense strength, Sven and Svala airlift the fjord horse across the moat and into the deep thicket behind the Ladegården.

Sitron weakly whinnies in gratitude, then asks, in his best equine to rangifer translation, for Sven to continue to watch for his returning master, Prince Hans and the dungeon escapees, and for Svala to keep an eye out for any movement on the other side of the moat for Queen Elsa.

Sitron himself then fearlessly races towards the stable of his birth.

The one place in the world, like Hans in his own home, he was never welcome in.

* * *

"What the deuce was that, now?!" Keen eyed Navy man Prince Jürgen vociferously says aloud in incredulous suspicion after being duly accosted by a sputtering, spasmodic, speechless Hermine who converged upon him from the pockets of darkness on his supposedly serene daybreak constitutional.

The ditzy blonde had breathlessly run up to the tall horseshoe bearded man during his solitary stroll beside the long narrow fjord stream that ran through the east side of the Egeskov estate. A hysterical Hermine was too overwrought to be able to speak coherently to claim she had been instructed by Adelaide to fetch him immediately, so she simply tugged at his non-comprehending arm in the direction of the stables, wordlessly.

"Watch your language around my wife, sailor boy! What's going on here?!"

Prince Jürgen's younger brother Berte appears from the woodsy forestry area, south of Egeskov main Castle building where he and hunting buddy, Prince Franz, had been on an early morning rabbit hunting excursion. A few visiting diplomats, at the billiards table late last night, had invited themselves on Franz's much ballyhooed early morning rabbit flushing. Stuffy Prince Berte had been dragged along, for diplomacy's sake, before either of them turned in to their empty rooms to find their wives, Hermine and Sophie Amalia, gone.

"Hermine!? Why are you out here - _in your indecent night wrap, no less_ – at this ungodly hour of the night!? I thought I told you to go to sleep immediately after retiring from dinner while I was left to do my royal duty and entertain the guest! Are you not supposed to obey your lord and husband's command, girl?!" Prince Berte had a harsh tongue, particularly when he was vexed with worry for his young wife who was full with child.

"I'm – I'm – I'm…" Out of breath from running, the upset German girl stutters before her demanding spouse. "I'm sorry, Berte! But, but, Princess Rapunzel was–" The sweet blonde runs her hand to her flustered curly yellow ringlets, distractedly straightening and readjusting her summer nightie's thin wrap over her shivering shoulders. But nothing would warm her under her husband's cold, unamused glare that he shared with his just as mystified big brother, Jürgen.

"Ever since that Prussian Princess appeared, every one of our ladies have been affected severely for the worse by that young woman's wild notions! I will not have you associate with her any longer, Hermine." Prince Berte's snobbish sensibilities were riled still since earlier at all the trouble to this house that strange, so-called ' _missing Princess of_ _Corona_ _'_ brought in her mutinous wake.

 _She had the audacity to come calling on this fine royal establishment, hiding behind the skirts of pitiable Mother Superior, no less, without proper notice, nor suitable entourage, nor escorted mate. Not that_ ** _his kind_** _would be welcome here either, from the rumors I've heard of her choice in a consort. What were her parents, the King Friedrich and Queen Arianna, thinking allowing their only child to cavort with a common thief! Oh! The disruptive awful influence that girl has been on my Hermine is deplorable!_

Berte's high and mighty superiority lays blame to Rapunzel for planting seditious seeds of rebellious notions in his formerly sweet and obedient little wife as he looks down at Hermine with a disappointed gaze, stroking his beard haughtily all the while to display his dissatisfaction with her waywardness.

"Adelaide needs your help, Jürgen!" By now in a puddle of tears, a despondent, trembling Hermine finally bursts out her intended message to her tall brother-in-law with the dark, ruddy complexion of a seasoned seaman.

 _Cough, cough!_

"Adelaide?! Where?!" Immediately losing his bona fide air of noncommittal bemusement at the argumentative upbraiding between his uppity lillebror, Berte, and his funny little maiden's flighty wiles, Prince Jürgen chokes on his lit pipe smoke when his blasé ears discern his own staid mate's involvement in this bizarre matter.

"In the stable – She sent me to get you!" Berated Hermine just manages a squeak out, while hugging herself miserably before him.

The dark pony-tailed Prince Jürgen takes off on his able-bodied, leg pounding stride to run across the gravelly ground between the east grounds and the monk's brick castle archway passage of the Ladegården entrance.

"Something scary is happening in there! Berte, please, do something?" Hermine, shaking from head to toe, turns to the leading man in her life for comfort. Despite his overbearing inclinations and unsympathetic chastisements when it came to sheltering his pregnant young bride, often going overboard, Hermine adored her Berte, although it seemed like he was always trying to dominate her. Yet, she trusted in him.

"Calm yourself, Hermine. Explain to me what frightens you and I will dispel it as no more than your proclivity for mere feminine fancies. I, as your husband, will lead you down the right path." Berte strokes his pointed VanDyke russet brown beard before he wraps a strong arm around her trembling thin white shoulders, pulling the blonde cutie back towards the strength of his self-assured chest.

Though he openly showed a condescending demeanor that looked down on her foolish folly to see demons in mere shadows, Berte revealed enough of his own warm sentiment, breaking through the icy cold slivers in his heart of feeling for her, to humor his sensitive girl and do his best to set things right for her disturbed mind.

* * *

 _ **Tens of feet underneath the Egeskov moat, in its subterranean tunnel…**_

"So, tell me again, which one of your illustrious older brothers put a hit out on poor Aged P over there? Just because the old man _may_ have slipped up on what grade of gem sparkler he set in a silly engagement ring? Who cares so much about impractical little trinkets like that when everyone knows it's the sentiment behind it that counts! Not the street value! What kind of loser, surface only skin-deep, insincere phony princes come from the Southern Isles? Present company _**not**_ excluded, Red!" Princess Anna of Arendelle muses with a purposeful little swiped tease at her favorite target as she glances in the dark tunnel at her simple, low karat wedding band and the pretty little brass sunflower ring that the gold band was placed beside that was more in Kristoff Bjorgman's tight budget.

Both basic pieces of jewelry meant more to Anna than a million flawless real diamonds or even a billion karats of genuine gold.

The girl's posed incredulous query hits home with both of her traveling companions right behind her. Although, the man on her left side and the other at her right had totally disparate reactions to the statement as Princess Anna projects her voice back to them over her racing forward shoulder.

"Don't ask me, Pixie. My opinion on shiny objects of great value is too touchy a subject. But if our big bros raised up there in that ornate castle are anything like our Pops, I don't think I'd trust a single one of their fancy-pants to enjoy blowing the foam off a cold beer over a friendly game of blackjack with the lot of them. I hear they disown you as soon as look at you cross-eyed, eh, Lillebror? Blood or no blood. Wonder what Blondie's been telling all of those posh snobs she's been rubbing shoulders with. I bet they can't _wait_ to meet me." With a wry smile thinking of his good kisser of a gal, Flynn Rider's endless stream of crass idioms comment from where he had been keeping an even trot behind the spunky little gingerbread cookie beside his disturbingly silent jail-breaker younger brother.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. I'd wager so." Hans Westergaard answers half-heartedly, his thoughts divided between his current escape situation and that same other one gnawing at the back of his intelligent sharp mind as they near the end of the long tunnel.

"What's up, Kid?" Eugene had become so close to Hans by now after all that they been through together, that he could tell when something was up with the redheaded Prince. Just from the heads-up of deafening silence on Hans' un-murmured lips, Eugene slows his pace to match his brother's suddenly lethargic one. Eugene leans down to his knees and takes a short breather on their fast-paced sprint to the finish to converse with the anxious younger man.

"That was too easy." Speaking slowly and rather morbidly conclusive, Hans' deliberate steps are measured as he had been growing slower for the past few meters while the conscience-stricken, handsome young man was in knit-brow consternation.

"I was thinking the same thing. But Sven sees the coast clear up there." Kristoff quietly asides, once again on the same wavelength as his former rival. Falling in step with him for some serious discussion without alarming Anna unnecessarily just yet, the ice harvester had been lagging behind, due to the fact that he was carrying the old geezer on piggyback once aged P's wobbly senior legs gave out, about 5 feet into the tunnel.

Ignoring the old man's distracting loud snore directly in his ear, Kristoff had been maintaining a contact with Sven above ground on another level of his gifted mind. The observant reindeer and his female counterpart had been keeping surveillance of the Chapel's rear exit and the surrounding grounds at the mountain man's request for the past few hours.

Even though the last ten minutes where Sven mentally was conveying something about rescuing a drowning horse – _whatever that meant_ – then had broken off their psychic contact, Kristoff was trying to keep the hackles at the nape of his neck from standing straight up the nearer the group of prison escapees got to the dim murky dawn at the end of the tunnel…

"Oh, isn't this amazing! It's my favorite part, because you'll see!" So busy singing and dancing her way to the tunnel's liberating outlet, Anna of Arendelle was paying little attention to the trio of worried, pensive eyed men behind the giddy race to her goal.

"Hey! There's the exit! Ha! You boys are slowpokes! Last one there is a rotten egg! And you're already one, Red!" Feisty and eager to get out of this claustrophobic crumbling underground crypt, Anna's cheerful voice announces with the capricious gloat at the trio of fine strapping lads that her _dainty_ legs could outrun – _any day_! – and leave them all in the centuries old tunnel's proverbial ( _and literal_ ) dust.

{"Anna! Wait!"} The Wind Whisperer call–aloud and mentally directly in her head—was either not quick enough to pierce through the melodically singing or the chuckling ginger girl took it as a headstrong defiant dare and continued her rapid flight up the carved stonework steps.

Dumping Aged P off into the pair of unprepared brothers, Kristoff charges like a bull seeing red right past Hans and Eugene forward to stop his inattentive, preoccupied bride.

Unable to hear any of their warning voices, inside her head or otherwise, for all her lively boisterous singing, Anna skips like a spirited jackrabbit two steps at a time up the incline leading out to the Egeskov Chapel's clandestine egress with excited, reckless abandon…

* * *

 _ **In the rear of the Ladegården stable, one more time as the chapel clock was about to strike 5 AM…**_

"Quiet the wenches, men! Their squalling is breaking my one shot concentration." The chief henchman with a loaded rifle aimed directly at Maximus' muzzy head spits out when Princess Sophie Amalia's high-pitched and Princess Adelaide's strident obnoxious orders become droning cacophony to his unbalanced ears.

It would just take one crack shot hit to the white Percheron's brain with clinical accuracy to cease the large equine's thrashing in pain wrenched screams and whinnying neighs from disturbing the peace of the yet to awaken royal household.

 _ **DING!**_

"Don't you dare pull that trigger, you sadistic menial lackey! By order of the Princess!" Quick thinking Adelaide's yanks away from her captors hold to cry out, purposely at the exact moment of the clock's first gong, until her captor's left hand muffles around her elusive loose lips again tighter.

 _ **DONG!**_

"I won't let you!" With a bit of fire in the belly than the Dutch Princess ever displayed before, kindhearted, soft-spoken Amalia jerks her face back to blow out the lamp in her assailant's other hand. Her quick thinking action causes utter darkness to befall the enshrouded rear stall, virtually blinding the gunmen holding the high powered cruel rifle aimed directly between Maximus' woozy eyes.

 _ **DING!**_

"Foolish unsightly woman! Give me that lamp!" The evil gunman rubs his aching temples as he squints in the darkness of the Ladegården stable furthest back area to backhand Amalia viciously. He grabs hold of the lamp and swiftly rekindles the extinguished lantern, hanging it up as he moves in closer to the wretched horse.

 _ **DONG!**_

"ARRRGGHH!" Just as the fourth wasted chime rings throughout the countryside ominously, Princess Sophie Amalia's blue-green eyes enlarge against the flickering lamplight as she silently witnesses that dark hooded marksmen's long barreled rifle be knocked from his grasp by a large woode post ripped straight from the ground.

Then she watches in awe as the astonished henchman is himself lifted right off the floor over the head of a growling, bestial assailant who had plummeted down from somewhere above. After a dizzying spin the gunman is tossed down to the ground like so much trash.

The villain's discarded gun never even had the chance to get his deadly shot out at the poor, beleaguered, cornered Percheron as the chapel clock finishes striking 5 AM.

 _ **DONG!**_

The breath caught in her gagged throat now gasps to behold the sight of a strikingly attractive, wild haired man who was all-too-familiar to the Princess of the Netherlands.

Like a stealthy shadow stalking his prey, the great hunter had appeared out of nowhere and everywhere all at once to pounce upon his victim with the expertise of a champion fighter.

"How dare you touch my woman, you _Anayeshindwa_! ( _loser_ in Swahili)" The well-built tenth son of Denmark's King Herbert, Prince Franz, had snuck in the Ladegården from above when he heard the horse's dire noises and looked down the stable's long row. Scaling the third row of stalls, the limber man had climbed down like a gorilla to aggressively flatten the gunmen threatening his wife to the floor with a nearby solid pine wood post used as makeshift battering ram. But Prince Franz enjoyed physically using his fists and might to smash the lackey personally.

Franz then grabs the man holding Sophie Amalia by the arm and easily wrenches him away from the brown haired Dutch woman. The hairy prince snaps the forearm of her captor easily with a trick shown to him by an Asian samurai fellow hunter he had befriended during the world traveler's recent excursion to the Far East.

 _ **PUNCH!**_

Franz' older brother Jürgen simultaneously joined the scene from the flank and uses the opportunity of the other two henchmen's inattention to follow through with his triple angled intrepid plan. Strategic Søværnet naval Kommander Jürgen had the trio of brothers enter the Ladegården from disparate sides as they all converged on the injured horse's wild screams and ranting to investigate the source.

"Jürgen!" Prim and proper Adelaide uncharacteristically falls into her husband's arms when the competent seaman does his part and squarely lands an equally debilitating punishing uppercut that his years on the high seas trained, to the henchmen who had been cruelly corralling his wife in the connected stall with this subjugation.

"Adelaide? Are you unharmed?!" Quite unaccustomed to his confident, authoritative life's partner clinging in his embrace, and liking the unexpected odd sensation more than he thought he would, Prince Jürgen strokes back his proud, half Italian, half Austrian wife's chignon mussed bun of hair.

Adelaide, catching herself, straightens and stands up on her own. Her face reverts back to the indifferent vague expression that the pair had shared in a rift forged between the two stubborn royals over their eleven years of marriage.

Prince Jürgen, tossing back his own askew pony-tail, clears his throat and gives his independent wife a respectful distance once again in their long given up for dead, loveless relationship.

As for the third wheel in this triple header, Prince Berte, as a lawyer, rather preferred to use his brain than his fists as compared to his two more physically fit and active brothers. Prince Berte had mobilized his foresight and clever smarts to make a quick wake-up summoning of the Egeskov Captain of the Guard Jorgensen in his Ladegården office apartment over the immense stable's archway to oversee the legality of this apprehension.

"There they are, Jorgensen. And their lies the poor beastie those foul men were torturing in attempted equinecide. It appears that my capable brothers have already seized and detained the perpetrators for your ease after my brave wife had alerted us of their villainous wrongdoing. Well done, men. Hermine." Self-righteous Berte congratulates his older brother Jürgen and younger brother Franz for a job well done, whereas he did not even have to lift a finger of his own uppity, snobbish clean hands.

But it was his acknowledgment of the thin little blonde wife's part in the heroic affair that gave the Princess of Waldeck a light of hope that her normally bossy and domineering hubby respected and cared for her.

Just like Princess Rapunzel said that he did.

With the glowing, proud smile, Hermine was now glad that she did not let her timidity stop her from doing the right thing. Just then, she spies Prussian Princess Rapunzel, followed by Gloria, Lujza, and Elisabeth, furtively streak by on their way towards Egeskov Castle's side entrance.

"Yes! You men were extraordinarily gallant! Like heroes in a novel!" Hermine, quite unlike herself, collected and bold, adroitly takes a step towards her husband with overt congratulations so as to shield the other retreating princesses. Her frilled sleeves raise to give them cover as she sincerely praises the brave princes who had come to their rescue.

Berte gives his blonde bride a raised brow, while a wry smile crosses his pursed lips at his not-so-blonde-airhead bride when he glimpses the secret exodus behind her. Perhaps his little wife had more enterprising initiative and alert wherewithal than he ever gave her credit for. A new and intriguing dimension, even.

 _This requires further looking into…_ A little bit more of that cool frost between them starts to melt with the awareness…

"But pardoning your highnesses, we were merely putting down this rabid beast to keep the other horses safe when the women went into hysterics. We meant no harm to the ladies if they got caught up in the violence, Captain." The third lackey of Rügen's attempts to explain away their transgressions without getting into any further trouble with the clout of Egeskov Castle's Captain of the guard looming against them.

"Then what's this?! You _pundashimo_!" Incensed, Prince Franz uses some debased language in the Swahili tongue he had learned to insult the man who had attacked his young wife as he displays her bruised arm and red slapped cheek with his large, yet surprisingly tender fingers from his manly hands around Amalia's soft chin.

"Do you perform public floggings on land?" Navy officer Jürgen had seen his share of humiliating punishment on board ships for lesser crimes than these as Adelaide shares with him an approving nod of the deserving castigation of the evil minions.

"But those are some of Count Rügen's men, your Highnesses. They are not under my jurisdiction. Nor is the putting down of whichever beast the King's right hand man claims irredeemable." Captain Jorgensen tried to wash his hands of the entire ordeal when he arrived to see the golden entwined anchors that were the crests of Denmark's Royal house on each of the three apprehended men's uniformed hoods.

"What justice is that?! They attacked our wives for heaven's sake, Jorgensen!" Prince Franz furiously yells with disbelieving verve at the cowardly audacity of this man whose command they previously all respected.

"No doubt they will claim that the ladies were standing in the way of their appropriately passing judgment on a rabid, wild animal loosed in this household. That, in itself, is a crime, no matter who the well-meaning dissenters are, for safety's sake. I will overlook it, this one time. But, I cannot—" The Hæren Special Forces Army man had grown so accustomed to kow-towing under the crooked political thumb of clawing Count Rügen here in Egeskov, that he had lost a great deal of his drive to fight the old corrupt system that the despicable sniveling man had manipulated the King with for years.

"Please, Captain Jürgenson. We must take exception to your leniency on these criminals. This steed is not rabid. It merely has been tranquilized and cruelly beaten by these self same villians. Beyond that wrong, this fine horse does not even belong to Egeskov. It bears the markings of the Prussian kingdom of Corona, clearly from the delineation on his Royal sigil collar. These men, and consequently Count Rügen, are violating international maritime laws by attacking and doling out early sentencing to put to death this non-rabid, property of the Prussian Royal Crown, without having the presence or notification of its owner before the sentence is carried out. Do you wish to cause an international incident, with our neighbors in the South, over a horse?" Princess Adelaide kneels down to pet Maximus's appreciative cheek. The intelligent Princess had spent some time in relative solitude to study up on the trifling matters of such a small jurisprudence according to the naval law that ruled Denmark, as well as being a remarkable public debator, according to her ladies' college professors.

Adelaide had made it a point for her daughters to study maritime law in the Southern Isles as by naval code. The well-educated Austrian woman wished for her intelligent teenage daughters to learn everything about the sea that there absent father loved. In doing so, Adelaide had become quite familiar with maritime law herself.

"Hmph. What is this? Why should we care so much about a sickly beast foreign to Ladegården? Under whose authority? Surely not a tenderhearted woman." Macho Captain Jorgenson's second in command officer observes as he gathers up the beaten down and battered henchman from where their fallen bodies were littered across the rear eastern sector of the stable.

"Excuse me, Sergeant. **You** **serve** **under** **my** **wife** , Princess Adelaide's authority. I hold Adelaide's judgment in higher regard than Count Rügen's or any of yours – _any day_. If she says it is the proper course of action, then it **is** the proper course of action. I trust Princess Adelaide's judgment more than anyone else's in the household. You are a lowly footsoldier for this kingdom, Jorgensen. She will forever be Princess and must be treated accordingly, even in my absence. Do you understand me?" In a clash of Danish armed services, Navy man versus Army man, the well spoken ship's Kommander aced when it came to doling out orders and strict reproofs to lower ranked officer.

Kommander Jürgen gives his wife more credence than most females of the day – even Royal princesses – ever garnered from men in general, and their princely husbands in particular.

"Call in the stable veterinarian at once to attend to the creature's needs. This horse is an honored visitor here at the stable and deserves our hospitality, after all. I take full responsibility, Captain Jorgensen, if there are any further questions." Prince Jürgen may not have understood all of the ins and outs of this enigmatic predicament, but he trusted his Adelaide's judgment implicitly and would back her up as his trusted first mate any day.

"I **am** glad you were around this time, Jürgen." Princess Adelaide whispers conspiringly in his ear when her husband and she walk confidently out from the stable, once she and he were both certain, as equal shipmates of this vessel called matrimony, that the Captain of the King's Guard would obey their joint command.

"I just didn't think **you** wanted me to be around, Adelaide." More confident in his Navy duties than that as a husband, Prince Jürgen affords his gutsy wife a genuine warm smile and squeezed hand, as the cool sea ice coating the polar ocean of his heart melted a few degrees.

"I didn't think **you** wanted to come home." Princess Adelaide responds in kind, allowing her outer callous façade built over the past decade to slip with a meaningful look and gentle smile at him. The strict woman gives a thumbs-up to a hurriedly passing by Princess Rapunzel, who was just cutting through the Ladegården complex into Egeskov. Adelaide was grateful for the few short lessons on believing in a long distance love, built out of mutual trust and respect that was now developing between Jürgen and herself.

Inspired by Rapunzel's simple, yet profound statement earlier, Adelaide was willing to keep burning a small lighthouse of hope to bridge the misunderstood troubled waters between her husband Prince Jürgen and herself to have the possibility to steer their ship right, warm hand in hand.

* * *

Once the violence was over, Franz had picked up his young wife and carried her over to a quiet medic station of the Ladegården complex where he and his roughneck brothers were well acquainted with after suffering multiple scrapes and broken bones growing up in this converted sports arena.

"Is that what it's like to see someone so tender and fragile be bullied by a bigger aggressor?" Pausing to bend down to pick up his tiny daughter Petunia's favorite stuffed animal that Sophie Amalia handmade herself, Prince Franz' massive hands pass the toy to his wife's petite ones.

His trained nurse in a Dutch princess had softly suggested for him to soak his handkerchief in some of the cool water she had mixed with a dose of witch hazel the young nurse had taken out in this the care section of the stable earlier to care for Maximus.

The brash, muscular roughneck youngster had turned into a violent man who now found hunting his best sport to lash out his pent up ire, especially after partaking of alcoholic beverages. But awakened by this eye-witnessed event at another brute's hands, hotheaded Franz was appalled to visually see how a vulnerable fragile maiden must quietly suffer through, unable to defend, nor complain of the brutal terror her smaller, diminutive form could not show much resistance to.

The guilty man suddenly sees now, all in one blinding flash of self-realization, that Amalia had so many times endured the same at his own brutish hands whenever he indulged himself in a drunken state. Franz knew he released his cold frustrations on her when there was no other target for his massive fingers to take out his great aggravation upon.

But now those enormous unrefined fingers were gently massaging his Sophie Amalia's battered cheek with a gentleness neither of them knew that he possessed.

"The Devil will never catch me doing this to you again, Sophie. I swear it." Franz heartily declares as he picks up from her lap and squeezes Petunia's plush toy pony in his regretful shaking fists.

"The Lord chases the Devil's evil machinations from his people's hearts and answers our most fervent prayers." Raised a devout Christian girl, Princess Sophia Amalia smiles invitingly up at her husband, basking in the warmth of her Franz. For once, she was in no fear of his cold-hearted drunken angry reprisal. Determined to be a better man and husband, Prince Franz lifts frail wife in his arms with a new gentility the rough man never used for anyone before.

The reconciled couple remain in the stable until Amalia was assured that Maximus had the best care by the trusted medical team that a humbled Captain Jorgenson personally assembled while Egeskov's Captain of the guard gladly cuffed and locked away the trio of Count Rügen's henchmen to stand trial for their unwarranted cruelty to a defenseless animal and disrespect to the royal women.

Yet another in the growing list of case trials for Magistrate of the Southern Isles, Prince Kaleb, to hear in the morning.

Princess Sophie Amalia looks up to her dear Prince Franz's unsure eyes. There, she sees something almost kind that she never thought she saw before in her oft coarse, cruel, and unkind mate.

 _There's something there that wasn't there before._

Amalia shares one last smile with Maximus before she allows her unlikely Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet and be pleased and content for him to carry her into his castle bedroom and treat her with kindness.

"Let's return this pony to our baby girl together, before she wakes up lonely for her parents on the new morning the Good Lord has given us. She misses her daddy tucking her in at night." As the merciful heart and body and soul of the woman who could be no more beautiful to Franz than at this forgiving moment presses her hurting cheek to his sober chest without shuddering, Prince Franz was beyond pleased to see that his Sophie Amalia had never looked up at him this loving way before.

* * *

 _Søværnet_ \- Royal Danish Navy

* * *

Hisashiburi dane, Frozen otomodachi!

(Long time, so see, Frozen friends!)

Sorry for the 3 week long wait! We've been busy here at this time of year filling out Halloween costume orders so my writing time is tight! ^-^

Hope you enjoyed this episode! We're delving into several of Hans' big brothers relation

Did you get a flavor of each of them? I want all the boys to be different and have their own personalities ships with their their Princess wives the same. I think it's interesting to see them as three dimensional characters, not just flat-line mean big brothers.

I wonder how they'll act now with Hans, being older and mature, and shaped by their marriages to these women. Although, many still retain that same resentment embedded in them by their cold hearted father since wives now as we march forward through this story arc!, and their childhoods for the despised little boy who took their Mother away from them.

I also infused a lot of Beauty and the Beast 'Something There' lyrics that applied I think to bestial Prince Franz and his sweet wife Sophie Amalie.

Naval officer Prince Jurgen and prim Austrian Princess Adelaide had a reunited moment here, and bossy Prince Berte & meek little Hermine did some bonding with the little changes that mean so much to lovers reaching out to one another for some understanding and common ground. Even opposites can make good matches, if they feel the love tonight. ^0^ Which of the 3 couples explored here did you like best? Jurgen and Franz were seen in 'Once Upon a Time' and I somewhat based their looks and personalities on those actors I see in my head, along with Setuna's wonderful drawings of all 12 of Hans' brothers (plus Eugene!:)

Rapunzel and our other Disney girls' fairy dust of love is spreading all over cold Egeskov! There's Somethihng There that wasn't there before!

And the ongoing drama continues for Prince Hans and his love affair with Queen Elsa of Arendelle! Their romance is about to blossom in unexpected ways very soon as the story marches forward!

Please review this dramatic chapter of fleshing out the characters and relationships of Hans' family here in the Southern Isles! I promise a romantic climax ( _and maybe an important question ;_ ) is coming soon, just a few exciting chapters away for our red hot and cold ice couple!

Thanks for your patience! But I don't want to skip anything in this juicy drama full of handsome princes, interesting villains and mysterious secrets full of twists and turns within the castle of Egeskov as this story arc draws to it's exciting finish!

Thanks for putting up with me! The grand finale of this part of this Frozen Again romantic drama is already in the works for Hans and Elsa, Kristoff and Anna & Eugene and Rapunzel! I'll try to get another chapter up soon in between full of action and romance for our favorite Disney stars!

God bless!

Love your Frozen friend,

HarukaKou


	20. Chapter 20 - Red and Ginger

" _We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 20**

 **"Red and Ginger"**

Behind the Egeskov Chapel, Princess Anna of Arendelle, whether she didn't hear Hans and Eugene's urgent warnings to stop, along with her Kristoff's strident mental calls, due to her singing, or just simply chose to ignore the men, keeps going.

The ginger braided girl was too excited to be the first to escape that dark, dank, smelly secret tunnel passageway as she pops her head out into the first glimpse of sunrise to intake a deep breath of the much desired fresh air.

"No right, no wrong, no rules for me! I'm free!" Her jubilant voice sings out the sure yet defiant phrase that her big sister once uttered in her own rebellious flight into the windy unknown. A giggling Anna acrobatically scrambles her lithe body and, little by little, pulls herself up the steep incline meant for legs much longer than hers. She sprawls herself across the grassy knoll behind the church in breathless triumph when she finally ascends to the surface.

"Ha ha! Fast as fast can be, you'll never catch – _GASP_!" The orangey-haired girl's joy to be out above ground under the open sky, was mixed with her secret relief to have found Mr. Hans Westergaard alive and well as she plops with relief like a sunflower angel on the sweet summery grass. All that, combined with her natural exuberance for life is rudely interrupted by the dark shadow of a sneering, scarred face. A repulsive stranger hovers over Anna with evil dark eyes that penetrated the foggy dawn with their malcontent.

"Au contraire, my songful little piece of chum. I've caught you like a fish out of water." Count Humperdinck Rügen clamps his hand over Anna's shocked, open gaping mouth. The bearded man leans over the wide-eyed surprised girl as his no longer six-fingered special hand claws around her struggling neck with a pleased, yet malicious look on his smug ugly face.

{"Kristly! It's a trap! Get out of here! There are a lot of them!"} Princess Anna, amidst her shock, had enough selfless presence of mind and deep caring to rather warn away her love from danger than call for him to rescue her at his own peril.

The Ice Harvester, barreling up the remainder of the tunnel in ten seconds flat after unceremoniously dumping Aged P from his back onto Eugene's grunting form, had absolutely no intention of heeding his new wife's command, this time.

But Hans Westergaard, seeing the pressing impending time, more sure of the layout, swifter on foot without the burden of Aged P that Kristoff had, and several paces closer to the exit, takes it upon himself to beat the blond man to it.

Hans bounds up the ancient stone steps two at a time and scales the grassy ledge at the dungeon's hidden entrance he had explored so many times in his youth, now still with the greatest of ease.

With an amazing back flip, the slim, trim and wiry Danish prince propels his agile body up to the surface level through the small shaft remaining before the flat heavy stone lid is fully in place atop the church cellar egress.

Hissing beneath his breath, Kristoff, with all due speed, just did not make it in time. The disconsolate big blond slams the full weight of his body to his broad shoulder against the heavy concrete cover. But after pushing with all his might which still doesn't budge the stationary closure barrier one inch, the stubborn strongman refused to give up.

So that left Anna above ground with only one hero remaining at her disposal.

Hans Westergaard quickly stands to his feet after he shimmied his thin form between the slid over stone cover and rolled onto the grass to his full six foot two height in the rising dawn. He squints his green eyes in the few glinting sun's rays through the daybreak fog, already well aware of who schemed this ambush.

He knew from experience that Count Rügen was the type who always planned ahead for his iniquitous machinations.

"So, the prodigal appears. You dare challenge me with an épée? I orchestrated this trap in your honor, Devil boy. You have fallen right into my clutches, at long last. "Count Rügen's dastardly embittered smirk makes Anna cringe beneath the large acrimonious man's squeezed arm around her neck in a chokehold.

Rügen had, early in the morn, already set a plan of action for Prince Hans' brainless horse, correctly named Sitron – who would always be a worthless lemon of a runt in Rügen's eyes, despite the fine large and muscular form that the small discarded foal developed into under his little itty bitty Prince's loving hands— to be drawn away.

Wily Rügen had timed the other annoying steed, Maximus' tortured demise to lure Sitron away from the cellar entrance he was keeping guard at. The Count did not wish to cause any unwanted noise of a struggle or an easy, nearby gunshot to alert their position to those imminently scheduled to emerge from below.

Of course, Rügen's correctly calculated that the foolish noble horse belonging to that unlucky thirteenth disowned Prince of the Southern Isles would make a heroic attempt, albeit in vain, to try to rescue a fellow equine crying for help in the Ladegården.

But Rügen did not foresee that stupid stallion would attempt to run across the moat in the darkness, so brainless it apparently confused the still water for land. Especially since Rügen had his men lower the drawbridge to entice the golden dun stallion's return to the stable along it. The grand master of evil vengeance certainly did not foresee when a pair of flying reindeer had swooped down to rescue the drowning steed.

 _No matter…_

With a backup of a dozen of his most ferocious, faithful lackeys, diabolical Count Rügen came fully prepared for this early morning lie-in-wait as his minions quickly slid the heavy cement cover over the Chapel cellar exit to ensure no one else emerged uninvited.

"The more you fight, young prince, the tighter my hand squeezes around this little girl's neck. Or perhaps you would not mind to be rid of this pain you're anchored to. Pretty as she may be." Rügen threatens Anna, whose eyes slit defiantly at the pain of her constricted throat strugging for breath as Kristoff growls below the surface, pounding the stone walls.

Hans puts up his hands, dropping his sword as he allows Rügen's vindictive lackeys to rough him up bad.

"Hans!" Anna cries out as she watches the Danish Prince, due to her, take several hard blows directly to his abdomen where she remembers the deadly stab wound he endured was in the vicinity of.

 ** _KICKK!_**

And Princess Anna of Arendelle doesn't let the inattentive moment go to waste. It just takes Rügen's split second focus on Hans for Anna to physically kick and try to get herself out from being pinned by the neck under the evil arms of Count Rügen. The lead villain growls down at Anna's prone body thrashing against his grasp.

The 'damsel in distress' viciously power knees the nasty man in his thick gut, giving him a hard shove back.

"Take that, Scarface!"

Rügen's ugly countenance darkens as he offsets this pesky child's challenge by putting his full weight to press the peppery, squirrely princess down to the ground again. Now even angrier, his gnarled hand grips ruthlessly around her throat, squeezing hard.

Anna's wide open eyes see Hans suddenly come to life and begin to knock the stuffing out of the men taking turns using him for a punching bag as he uses their momentum to physically flip the villains over his broad, physically fit shoulders.

 _Great. Just me and Red. Again. I can't believe my luck! My life depends on that skinny, gorgeous, tricky jerk_! Anna's jumbled, cheeky thoughts were more sarcastic than she honestly felt. But the lack of oxygen chokehold this bizarre creep was depriving her of as he had her pinned down to the grass could be blamed for her mental incoherent issues.

Without a second thought to his own safety, the redheaded Dane rushes forward, drawing his sword from its sheath in a textbook fencing advance.

"Master Rügen! Step away from that young woman, or I'll run you through! En garde!" Assessing the situation of over ten henchmen surrounding the secret exit's perimeter where Anna was subjugated by a madman's hand at her fragile neck, Hans raises the challenge to his Southern Isles fencing instructor with a competent passé feint of his sword.

"He's the one who's a devil, Hans! Go ahead and thrust! Never mind me!" Versed in fencing terms herself, Anna selflessly encourages her former rival to assail his evil adversary without fear of her own security.

 _What licentious treachery have you supplanted in this foolish girl's mind for her to be so willingly involved in this affair, Devil boy?_

"And what kind of netherworld strange mysticism have your tentacles tapped into, Devil Boy?" Rügen's perfidious, depraved mind wondered at these mysterious twists concerning his despised arch nemesis little redheaded Prince which seemed to take a new disturbing turn.

"Anna! I refuse to endanger you!" Prince Hans argues with the brave young woman as the expert fencer continually staves off the lurching forward bloodthirsty henchmen all eyeing and rushing him with his threatened coupé and coulé of sword glisé deception and defense.

The evil villain plies his formerly polydactyl digits around Anna's jut out chin and defiant eyes glaring up at him as her irate teeth sharply snap at his fingers in vain. Rügen then wraps his other large hand around her neck in a stranglehold while trying to discern who she was to mean so much to the prince as he shoves her struggling form down to the ground.

 _'Anna?' Hmm…_

 _Could this be that Arendelle princess who threw you over up in the_ _North country_ _? What is this female hysteria of insanity for to now defend you? You appear to have a baffling hold over the weaker sex, devil boy. Is this fondness for women your Achilles' heel, I wonder?_

"Stop being so heroic, Red! Take that, Ugly!" After berating the oh-so-gallant prince, Anna takes it upon herself to forcibly spit a great big juicy amount of saliva right in her captor's eye as he was looming over her.

Seeing red as he drags Anna up by her braid and neck to stand up with him, Rügen violently tosses Anna aside for his right hand lackey to take over the ginger's captivity as he wipes her spittle off his growling face.

 _ **CLANG!**_

It took only one artful second for the Count to unsheathe his familiar sword as the evil man uses a fierce opening insistence attack on Hans' extended blade already in assault mode, once Anna was out of the picture.

 _Parry, feint, weave._

Even though it had been many years now since Prince Hans had honed his fencing blade against such an experienced challenger in the true art of swordplay, his every tendon was invigorated by the calisthenics.

Pirates with their cutlasses did not possess the finesse of the true spirit of a well-trained gentleman and his steel. Yet, the riposting classy young man had not lost his talented touch as he drives Rügen back with the surprising tensile power of a stop thrust his thin frame belied of his wiry muscular biceps and extensors.

But neither did the vicious fencing teacher lose his touch, although Count Rügen was by no means a gentleman in any sense of the word. Rügen ruthlessly diverges from the time honed rules of swordsmanship to thrust his épée's hilt at his youthful opponent well below the solar plexus-the recognized target infringement limit of 'hitting below the belt'.

Seeing stars that he thought had already gone out with the coming daybreak, the Danish prince momentarily stumbles to his knees on the ground, panting. Hans reels momentarily, stunned back by the uncouth attack to his vitals.

"Don't just stand there looking pretty, fencing by the rules and getting walloped, Red! You've got to play dirty with this loser, too! Cut off his balls!" _Princess_ Anna crassly cries out the warcry. She had attended more than a few mountain men wrestling matches up in the hills when she often visited Kristoff in his northern digs last winter. There she met many sights and sounds of oft loud, often drunk with the warming akvavit, disruptive now and then, men. But the hard-working pioneers were basically good and honest and good people, though the rough language left a bit of an impression on the previously sheltered girl.

"Silence the wench!" Rügen shouts angrily at Hans' vocal new 'attack trainer', all while keeping a close watch on his winded opponent. The evil Count was making the decision to simply kill his despised archenemy here and now, or let the torture he had carefully planned continue its full run.

"Such coarse language, my lady. What would your dear sister say?" Though teasingly reprimanding, Hans finds Anna's humor encouraging as he swiftly rises to his feet, expertly swinging his sword around with his left hand. The proper fencing appel lunge is countered by his defending combatant. But his right hand half takes 'Coach Anna's' advice, as Hans intends to indeed, play dirty.

With literal dirt grasped from the ground in his long fingers, Hans throws the particles directly into Rügen's recently spit in eyes, the smudged mud sticking to his streaked face.

"Argh! You son of Satan!" The man cries out epitaphs loudly, even in the sacred holy church setting as Anna watches with wide-eyes when Prince Hans obey her command.

Hans uses his opponent's partial blindness to, all at once, knock Count Rügen back with a debilitating, well pinpointed kick with the leverage of his long legs to knock Rügen's own out from beneath them with an audible crack to the man's disjointed knee, and then grab the unbalanced sword away from Rügen with an adroitly twisted flick of the wrist.

In one fluid moment, Hans dashes towards Anna, thrusting the hilt of Rügen's own accosted sword to bash up into the henchman's soon bloodied nose, decking him squarely, to set Anna free.

"Wow." It's all an impressed Anna could say as she murmurs under her breath the muted exclamation after witnessing Prince Hans in action-packed fluid motion. Hans spins on his tall booted heel to join her side, leaning his back to her dizzy one for support as he continues to fend off each of the wicked lackey's predictable attacks.

"Was that impressive enough for you, my cage wrestling instructor?" The red-haired Prince smirks a playful rejoinder from where he was leaning against Anna. His adrenaline was up, along with a male ego to match at the successful defeat of his expert enemy even without the use of his trademark sword.

Although, ambidextrous dual handed Hans shows off close-up his swordsmanship to Anna by neatly slicing off an oncoming attacker's cape with one hand, entangling the shredded fabric around the crony's leg with his other hand holding Count Rügen's stolen sword as the tripped up henchman falls down, immobilized.

"It was okay. But you forgot the part about hitting him where it hurts!" The tantalizing ginger's taunting laughing eyes can't help but flash as she tosses the barb over her shoulder, where she and Hans were making a pretty good back to back team-up.

"Where, pray tell, did you learn such ill-mannered, un-feminine manners, dear Princess?" Hans felt quite at ease to exchange this mischievous banter with this girl he almost considered now as a fiery little sister.

"From my Papa, who taught me to fence _**and**_ how to defend myself against strange men _properly_ , of course." The peppery girl then proudly lays claim to Rügen's sword from Hans' hand to grasp it securely in her eager ones.

When, within a few seconds, the next attacker charges up to her flank side, Anna wickedly slices off his trousers at the hip with abandon, as if to show Hans how it's properly done. The shocked henchman's ripped pants slide down his legs as the beefy brute turned red in embarrassment trying to cover himself. Hans finishes him off by kicking the equilibrium lost man's backside down the steep hill the rest of the way.

Another pair of henchmen converge to attack Hans and Anna from either side. But as Hans and Anna simultaneously duck out of the way, the villains end up grappling one another in a shameful hug instead. Hans and Anna, on the count of three jump up to grab each man by the stumbling neck and bash their skulls together for instant double KO.

Anna and her ex-fiancé share a bemused glance. Despite being amidst danger, the prince and princess jovially start laughing at the crazy fun the unforeseen, impish pair of 'Red and Ginger' combined were having together at the henchmens' expense.

 _"Our mental synchronization, can have but one explanation_!"

Thinking against her better judgment that Prince Hans may not be so bad to have around anymore, Anna can't help but start singing a fitting line from their old ditty. She half expected her partner at her back, just as he did back then, to join in the melodic duet.

But instead of finishing the fun-loving orangey princess' ' _sandwich'_ _as he had falsely pretended to once before_ , the Danish Prince's amiable smile instantly goes serious and grim.

"Anna! Watch out!" Hans cries out a warning from where his alert gaze saw several of the other minions hunker down with their rifles, at their Master Rügen's command, to take aim at the unruly pair.

"Hey!" The irritated ginger girl's eyes then bug out when her red-headed cohort none-too-gently pushes the boisterous princess back behind him.

With his arms outstretched, Hans takes a protective stance to shield Anna as competently as his thin, svelte form could manage an all-points body defense, readied to intercept any bullet's first impact.

 _ **POWW!**_

"Anna! Hit the dirt!" Landing a powerful punch on some of the more itchy fingered gunmen, Kristoff Bjorgman comes bounding around the side of the chapel with all the speed of an eagle, the fierce strength of a lion and the indignant fury of a young lover.

"Got your back, Sideburns!" Flynn Rider, too, had emerged from the shadows of the chapel's underground subterranean tunnel that he and Kristoff had together muscled opened from the inside.

Before any shots go off, the group of armed snipers were ambushed themselves by the two muscle-bound heroes who had furtively surfaced from the front section of Egeskov Chapel. Kristoff and Eugene had finally made their way through the stone barrier blocking the cellar door to crawl up through the vacant chapel itself, fists already flying.

{"Sven!"} Kristoff mental voice suddenly rings out clearly through the daybreak sky.

{"On it, Buddy!"} Already mid-flight on his way back to his watch post, Sven sends the communication out to Kristoff who had called out through their psychic link for his best friend to save his imperiled girl.

Once Kristoff and Eugene had combined their muscles to open enough of a crack in the large stone boulder blocking their exit from the dank tunnel shaft, the pair of men had raced with abandon through the Egeskov Chapel to get outside. Kristoff had sprinted forward full steam, sensing imminent danger on the surface from Hans' tense spike of trepidation and anxiety for Anna.

{"Anna! Keep your mind out of the clouds and get on Sven!"} While he was frantically trapped in that underground tunnel, Kristoff had been monitoring Anna's thought waves. The not _very_ jealous newlywed had been astounded by the few stray compliments as to Prince Hans Westergaard's slim and trim, impressive physique and combat abilities from his own unpredictable new bride.

"But -!" Kristoff's Feistypants quite vocally preferred to stay and fight with the boys, but her young husband's insistent mental barrage and Hans' compliant quick lift of the piquant Princess of Arendelle onto Sven's lowered back, made it impossible for her to protest.

"Farewell, Anna. Next you see your sister… Tell her to forget about me." Looking upwards with a swift saluted wave in parting to his ginger-haired unlikely partner in crime, Hans' convivial smirk goes sad and melancholy thoughtful with the vision of lovely, unreachable Elsa of Arendelle in his head.

As his intelligent mind realized the eventual outcome of this endgame, Hans was grateful that at least Anna would be safe, as he knew Elsa would've wished above all else.

But saucy Anna of Arendelle would always protest being left out of any action.

"Don't you dare, Red! Kristoff Bjorgman! Sven! Stop this!" She screams out at all the male testosterone ordering her about, shaking her fist at Hans as Sven takes flight to make distance between them quickly.

{"Sven. Get Anna far away from here!"}

"Sven, don't listen to him! Turn around now and pick up Kristly!"

While perplexed by all of the back and forth bickering between his two most beloved people in the world, Sven follows the flight pattern of several friendly, radar-sensing night owls who had come to the Wind Whisperer's aid to help the reindeer avoid bullet by bullet as he takes off under gunfire.

Anna looks back pensively, desperately wishing to be part of the fight again beside her strongman true love, Kristoff.

"But Kristly!" Anna cries out in wild opposition, grabbing a hold of the reins to force a perplexed, mournful-eyed Sven to spin around. The fiery princess makes Sven hover back over to where Kristoff was on the ground.

With his furry head down, the affable reindeer accomplishes his signature lift of his partner onto his back to join Anna.

{"Anna, don't argue with me on this. Please. Go find us help, Baby."} Onboard Sven, Kristoff leans forward to softly kiss away the painful looking red marks at the nape of her neck where Anna was leaning back against his sturdy body as Kristoff sends off two psychic messages. The first was a loving kissed plea of a new husband to his lifetime partner and new wife to listen to his insight; the second a responsible appeal to his lifelong best friend.

{"Sven, I'm relying on you!"}

Anna turns her equally defiant, frightened and passionate head around to meet straight on with her love's pleading yet demanding eyes at the sentiment overheard through their soulful bond between the best friends.

From where she was on Sven's back, Anna watches her brave Kristoff make a daring dive from his in flight reindeer to take out hostile Count Rügen right where he was standing with an unforgiving blow to his gut.

With his large framed body, Kristoff mows down the mud-blinded villain who was swinging his produced revolver in the general direction of Hans' vulnerable back. Then the Ice Harvester rushes to join the battle skirmish with Eugene and Hans.

"Kristoff!" Anna screams aloud as Sven makes 180° spin around in an another attempt to climb the sky as the reindeer thoroughly comprehends Kristoff's sincere, utterly devoted and protective intentions for his beloved Anna through their powerful soulful link.

{"Trust me, Baby. We'll catch you up later."} This was the last encouraging communication Anna hears from her love as Kristoff mentally blocks her empathy to his raging battle emotions while Sven swiftly makes distance towards the rising dawn.

But with the collective firepower of the multiple riflemen all pointing their firearms at the three protagonist heroes, escape seemed highly unlikely for them.

But none of the three dashing young men with indomitable spirits were going down without a fight.

Prince Hans furtively signals above their heads for Eugene to take to the left, while the military trained strategist himself makes a rush for the right side of the enemy line, sword drawn.

 _ **POWW! SMA-ASSH!**_

Powerhouse Kristoff Bjorgman wordlessly takes the brothers' cue and charges the direct center of the firing squad of riflemen head-on. Since his Anna was still in gun range, the mountainman already figured he'd have to create enough interference to cover for Sven's in-flight departure.

Kristoff swiftly advances forward without much more than his sheer force of body strength to push through and punch out as many of the crowd of Rügen's cronies as his minions immediately converge upon the trio with their loaded weapons.

The usually not so violent, gentle giant Ice Harvester wished he had brought his trusty Saami Longbow with him to level the playing field a little, but it was still strapped to Sven's back, which was thankfully carrying his Anna securely away.

Facing the danger valiantly at his sides, Hans and Eugene continue to bash and smash and slice and dice several of the villains.

"This is this getting pretty routine for us, boys. We should sell tickets." With a few quick-handed flicked capes and gun grab, Flynn teases his compatriots as he and the dynamic youthful pair of Hans and Kristoff take the villains on all at once in a chaotic melee, rather skillfully working together.

"Subdue them!" Just clearing his mud caked eyes with some water from a lackey's canteen, Count Rügen cries out, now backhanded mopping the blood oozing from a broken bloody nose and split lip that this devilish prince and his inferior burly mountain man companion had the audacity to inflict.

But even sly Flynn's devious jousting baffling the lackeys, Kristoff's massive muscular intimating fists leveling the villains, with the vigorous assistance of Hans' deft swordplay keeping their opponents on defense were no matches for a half dozen armed men all collectively drawing their guns upon them now.

En masse, Rügen's gunmen cock their weapons back menacingly right in our heroes shocked faces.

{"Sven! Get Anna home! And don't look back!"} The Wind Whisperer mentally commands his reindeer best friend as logical Kristoff realizes that this just may have been a losing battle for the three of them…

* * *

"Don't shrink from a little blood splatter, gentlemen! Please do shoot point-blank to kill this loathsome pair of vermin! Just leave the little Prince for me." Nursing his throbbing ribcage where that inferior burly mountain man had ferociously bruised his ribs, Count Rügen hobbles forward to give the order to what was left of the men that Kristoff, Flynn and Hans had been taking down. The cruel man heartlessly commands his minions to summarily shoot both the hefty muscleman and the agile thief defying them.

Then, with a malicious sneer on his stormy, angry features, the Count trains the unsteady pistol he had collected from the grass upon his archenemy Hans' redhead to drop the naval sword that had been dexterously holding his minions at arms' length.

"Master Rügen! Please, I beg of you! If you let my friends go without harm, I promise to fulfill your every bidding from this moment forward. If you wish it, I will singularly stand before the Royal Court and plead guilty to every crime you lay before me. If you require my life, I will willingly give it in exchange for the safety and freedom of these good, blameless people." With a resigned look on his handsome, humble features, Hans Westergaard immediately forgoes his own dignity and pride and falls to his knees in a plea for Eugene and Kristoff's lives and liberty.

"Oh, this is too delicious to be true! The discredited, disgraced, disowned youngest son of the King to be put on trial and give a plea of guilt for whatever crimes I charge against him? This has worked out better than I planned." Flexing his left hand's lonely five fingers with the bitter remembrance of its sixth, vengeful and plotting Count Rügen salivates at the thought of physically and mentally torturing this unsavory child of Lucifer to be his licking boy.

 _And_ be invited to drag Hans Westergaard' name in the mud even deeper than it already was by the wicked boy's own doing, was just the icing on the cake.

"Yes. That may give me even far more pleasure than even letting the blood of this rabble be spilt today. You keep your end of the bargain, Devil Boy, and I may consider telling my men to withdraw their fire…" A leering Rügen lets the offer before Hans dangle in the air as he holds one halting hand to his minions, staving off their gunfire volley as Sven's distance in the sky starts to be falsified by crack shot high-powered riflemens' deadly aim upon.

"If you allow them to go free and leave Denmark alive without reprisals, I give my word as a gentleman to submit to your will, Master." Hans pledges his most honorable vow, one that he knew Count Rügen understood would keep this well-bred Prince honorbound.

"Like hell you will, Lillebror!" Eugene Fitzherbert's vehement voice rings throughout the countryside as he surprises both Hans and Count Rügen by living up to his sneak thief title.

Flynn Rider, amid the chaos of Kristoff's fist pounding and Hans' self-sacrificing attention grabbing soliloquy, had substituted himself with one of the waylaid dark caped henchmen he'd knocked senseless.

Flynn Rider appears out of nowhere, like a thief in the night, and grabs Rügen by the gun arm.

In the dawn's pale light, he wrestles with the vile man, Eugene vying for Rügen's loaded pistol that goes off several times up into the air, until its bullets were spent.

Hans seamlessly retrieves his fencing sword to fend off any minions rushing to his aid who were all too fearful to shoot their high-powered rifles lest harm their severe supreme leader as the gunmen each try to rush Eugene's assault instead.

Pleased that Eugene cared enough to risk his life to save him, Hans was also grateful to have Kristoff's sure strength as capable back-up support, though he did not wish to involve either of these good men in this enemy's personal vendetta against him.

Successfully holding the henchmen back as Eugene was surprisingly doing a fair job of busting up the Count, the former rivals stand back to back. With fists flying and sword combat readied against the remaining onslaught of hand-picked ruthless fighters to encircle them, perhaps the battle wasn't yet lost.

That is, until Aged P suddenly stumbles out of the chapel where one of Count Rügen's men had entered into the church to fetch the elderly man who made the unfortunate accident to peer curiously out the door at the fisticuffs battle taking place there.

"If you want this dirty old man to get his comeuppance right now, keep swinging, gents." A glowering, hunchbacked lackey, who had been with Rügen for decades, pulls a knife at Aged P's gulping neck. The threatening act causes Kristoff to lower his fists and Hans once again to drop his sword to the ground as the pair of gallant young man immediately submit in fear for the old man's life.

Now, as for Flynn Rider…

"Aw, old geezer! I was just about to knock this sadistic loser into the middle of next week!" Eugene complains of his stealthy victory being snatched by the jaws of defeat as the thief had used his talented digits while he and Rügen were wrestling on the ground to keep the firearm not only at bay, but just about to be dipatched in the Scarface's direction.

"Fine, fine. I promised Big Nose we'd save his old dad. Guess we'll have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court now." Eugene hangs his head and sighs, resigned to be a defendant at court trial for jailbreaking, or at least strike a plea deal for the light crime of aiding and abetting. Speechifying, the former crook drops his guard against the Count and sits up on the grass where the pair had been wrestling for Rügen's gun.

Eugene did not expect the gentlemanly Count to vengefully bash his face in with the butt of the empty handgun when he wasn't looking to flatten him to the ground beneath.

"Hey! The face is my calling card! Not that I can say the same for you, you revolting creature!" Eugene taunts and complains of the bruised jaw beneath his dark stubble that the nasty villain no doubt just implemented on the gorgeous face he was rubbing. Eugene unwittingly brought back up illicit recollections long years ago of a concealed, murderous past.

"Mark my words, thief. You will never go to court. I will be the one to send you to the middle of oblivion first, you cursed golden eyed son of Gypsy." Seething, Count Rügen's memories of a certain dark-haired, exotic eyed Roma Gypsy beauty in the streets of Paris overwhelm him with pure hatred, bitter retaliation and rancorous guilt to be unleashed upon her lost child.

Voracious with malice directed at the long dead ghost of Agnès la Cavalier, Rügen viciously grabs Eugene by the neck and starts strangling him just as he did her, bashing her bastard son's unsuspecting head to the ground over and over in an insane fury.

"No! Stop this! Storbror!" Hans vociferously cries out, already detecting this deep level of hatred – almost bitter guilt – in Master Rügen's maddened eyes every time he looked Flynn Rider.

So, Hans also realized that given the chance to, Count Rügen would try to ruthlessly kill his newest Storbror, and without a second thought or compunction.

But as Hans and Kristoff both struggle to help out brother and cousin, they were halted dead in their determined tracks by the collective firepower might of the Master's uniformed black hooded underlings at every desperate turn when they hear rifle after rifle cock in their direction. And our three heroes, plus Aged P, are caught standing in judgment before a relentless and unforgiving firing squad.

 ** _CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!_**

* * *

"Cease this violence to our citizens in this travesty of justice! In the name of the King of Prussia!" A low timbred voice, full of pompous authority, rings through the countryside as several uniformed men, mixed in with ten or so other less than savory individuals, come thundering across the rear Egeskov drawbridge.

"Count Rügen! Immediately unhand that man! I've just been informed that he is the Prince Consort of Corona!" Glad to have Count Rügen at a deficit at last, Captain Jorgensen of Egeskov adds his voice to a fellow Captain, of the Corona Guard, Schmidt's, with his unexpected one in rescue of Flynn Rider.

The tall and imposing chief law enforcement officer of Corona still held begrudging contempt for the criminal he had been chasing for years until one day the lucky rogue accosted Princess Rapunzel's heart in his thieving grasp.

But upright Captain Schmidt would do his duty for his beloved King Friedrich, even if it pained him to do it.

"But Captain Jorgensen! These men are colluding invaders, prison breakers, and violent disruptors who have committed unpardonable crimes against the Crown of Denmark! They must be punished!" With a deep-seated scowl directed down at Eugene, then over at Hans, wily Count Rügen was giving his fervent excuses with a scratchy voice to the Captain of the Egeskov guard until he is distracted by a disconcerting sight.

"Who are you?!" Angrily rattled to have a large painted face appear out of nowhere to pantomime for his hand to let go of his victim, Count Rügen is thrown off his game by the outlandish comical performer who doggedly continues to stick his face right into Rügen's, effecting a scowled scar in imitation.

The disconcerted Count removes his guilty hands from around Eugene's thankfully sturdy, thick neck to drop the despised crook. Flynn Rider falls into the arms of another strange, odd man who had rats on his head and shoulders, all fanning or patting at the unconscious sneak thief's cheeks to try to awaken his stunned, nearly strangled to death senses.

Rügen holds up his hands to halt his staggered back henchman, who were suddenly not only surrounded by several Corona uniformed guards, but also by strange men of all shapes and sizes, who had accompanied the Prussian Captain of the guard across the drawbridge.

The Snuggly Duckling thugs had, upon arriving through the Ladegården stables where the Captain of Corona had come to discuss matters with fellow chief Captain Jorgensen, had been alerted by Sitron.

Hans' horse had made quick friends with unicorn/horse lover Vladimir and had conveyed that there was trouble out back that needed their immediate attention.

Hans' able-bodied steed had been busy unlatching the locked stalls of the dozen Royal stalls of the first stable row that were filled with the special chosen stallions belonging to each of the Danish Princes of this Royal house. Soon, the curious Snuggly Duckling crew had rides to mount for each and every one of them to assemble the snobbish reinforcements Sitron proudly leads, with Captain Schmidt on his heroic back and his guard detail close behind.

Even Maximus, recovering nicely after his Princess nurse and well-trained vets had tended to his wounds and given the over-tranquilized steed stimulants, was, albeit slowly, able to hobble across the way. The stubborn horse insisted on coming to the rescue with Job on his back.

"Good to find you still be alive, t'ief." With his dark skinned Caribbean rider, the large white Percheron makes his way across the bridge to drool directly in Flynn's queasy ear, finally awakening the flummoxed man as Job smiles down at his fellow 'musketeer' with the reinforcements on both sides of the aisle that the reformed pirate first mate assembled back in Prussia.

"Max. Schmidt. Job. Guys. How's that for some flashy backup troops, boys?" Eugene smirks at Hans and Kristoff before he passes out into Bruiser's big healing expert arms.

"Aged P! Are you all right?! Big Nose and his sisters have been worried sick about you!" Vladimir urges his haughty horse over to his absent friend's father who was blessedly untouched amid all of violent melee of swinging fists and slashing swords and guns going off.

"Yepee. It's a shame that my old back gave out a while back. But yer good friend and his brother here have been real mensch to this old worthless abba, sticking by him through thick and thin. This is probably the last sunrise I'll ever see as a free man. Good it's a beauty. I probably won't be back to my old shop again. Tell Nozzy he'll have to fill in my shoes earlier than expected in the business." Aged P drones on as some of Jorgensen's men come to pick up the old timer to cart the accused away to sit atop a stallion with one of the guards.

The old Jewish jeweler continues to chatter in his thick Brooklyn accented voice as the guard horse was walking away across the drawbridge.

"But Captain, I had captured these men who pose a serious danger to our kingdom. That, in conjunction with arresting this crooked, evil jeweler our own Prince Rune has pressed criminal charges against, these three rascals were attempting to break out of prison. I'm sure you are familiar with the case Prince Rune had laid before you, and will be praised for bringing the illicit criminal to justice." A wheedling Count Rügen, with a little limped effort after the injuries that red devil boy had inflicted, walks up to Captain Jorgensen's horse. Rügen makes an attempt to persuade the Captain of the Guard to see his side of the story.

"These crimes **must** be addressed in the proper court of the King, my Lord. Which falls under my legal jurisdiction as the Captain of Egeskov's Guard. Have your minions stand down, Count Rügen. My men will take over from here." Captain Jorgensen, who never had any love lost for Rügen, the overstepping mouth and cousin of King Herbert, was pleased to pull rank and be the one giving orders now.

With the full backup of his equal counterpart in the person of intimidating Captain Schmidt of Prussia as his reinforcement, Jorgensen was emboldened.

"Men! Take the prisoners into custody for immediate trial!" Captain Jorgensen's own Danish trained forces scramble the field to disarm Rügen's men. The Count, seeing his limited options, chose prudence to bow to the greater force of public scrutiny – for now.

"I bow to your sagacity in assuring justice be served for these offenders, Captain. I trust I will be called upon to bear witness in your court?" The loathesome man brushes back his long waves of coiffed dark hair and twirls his mustache coyly.

"As you like." Jorgensen answers noncommittally cold, wishing to be rid of the odious man as soon as possible.

That's when Hook Hand's cold sharp steel snags threateningly against Rügen's sword sheath with the contentious clang of metal to metal.

"Oh, sorry. Slip of the hook." The rotund piano man with a musical dream 'accidentally' bumps into the evil man who gives Hook Hand back a portentous look.

"Just stay out of my way." The deep, even more gravelly voice drips with vile wicked venom as Rügen pushes past the Snuggly Duckling thug leader to enter the Castle through the Ladegården's darkened side entrance.

Captain Jorgensen directs his lieutenants to gather Hans and Kristoff to march while Captain Schmidt himself takes charge of hefting Prince Eugene onto Sitron to cross the moat on the shared saddle before him, as if he considered Eugene as an important personage.

"Hey Schmidt. I didn't think you cared so much." Flynn can't help but slide in the mocking tease at his longtime nemesis, causing Schmidt to roll his eyes.

"I'm simply taking you to get your just desserts, Rider. In a court of _**law and order**_. Certain words you have little knowledge of and less respect for." The large guard retorts snidely down at the would-be man in his grasp.

"Hmmm? I don't do dessert, Honey. Except my soft warm brownie all with extra whipped cream on top. Yummm. I hear there'll be fresh milk together with her breadbasket soon…" Half in a dreamy gaze fantasy of his lady love who was to be the mother of his child, Eugene murmurs in the Captain Schmidt's chest as the man rolls his eyes over Flynn Rider's captured groggy head.

"Why Princess Rapunzel prefers you, I have no idea." Schmidt murmurs sourly under his breath as the Prussian military man urges Sitron to return across the bridge towards the Castle entrance.

Partway across the drawbridge, Sitron catches up to where Hans and Kristoff were being prodded by some of the Egeskov guards in their march across the moat.

"Hello, old friend." Prince Hans' lyrical voice breaks his whirring mind's calculations to greet Sitron with a grateful smile for interceding earlier. With bitter, unsatisfactory belittling thoughts and anxiety as to how Aged P and Eugene and Kristoff were all to be treated due to their association with him, Hans was certain that his cold, unfeeling father of a King, nor any of his unfriendly, callous brothers would be inclined to be kind.

After all, he had had bad blood between them for as long as Hans remembered all of his life

That condition had not improved since last they met, knowing they would not be welcoming nor sympathetic to his accused crimes. He was sure how his twelve unkind older brothers would react to passing judgment and sentencing their youngest outcast brother whom they all blamed as a whole for their mother's untimely demise.

 _Oh Elsa, my precious snowflake. How did you become involved with such an undeserving wretch like me?_ _Please let that beautiful chimera have been just been a fantasy. Please Lord, don't let my Queen be here to witness my second disowning, shame, and no doubt, death sentence. Let her presence here have been a mere figment of my imagination! Elsa! I couldn't bear that you would witness it, most of all! I want you to remember me as last we met, your devoted, admiring protector from afar._

Hans' foremost fear was the thought of losing Elsa's undeserved good opinion of him.

As the glum redhead marches in step towards Egeskov's postern side entrance courtyard, Sitron nuzzles his wet horsey muzzle against Hans' cheek, sensing his boy was emotionally and inwardly in turmoil on so many levels.

"Break it up, Your _Former_ Highness. You're a prisoner now, not a Prince. Remember that." Pulling back Sitron's reins that harshly, Captain Jorgensen looks down his high horse nose at this final son of King Herbert who had been disgraced by his Royal Majesty, officially two summers ago.

The squared jawed, neatly trimmed, bearded Danish Army man had a strict sense of justice and extent of learned justice that he, much like his equal rank Prussian head soldier of their respective kingdoms, held lawbreakers in disdain.

Royal bloodline or no, they would stand before the court trial and take immediate sentencing like any other criminal.

As the pair of stern, justice minded Captains nod to one another across the drawbridge, corraling Aged P, Hans, Kristoff and Flynn Rider in tow between their entourage, Snuggly Duckling men and all, Kristoff gives Hans a wan smirk at their uncanny ability to get out of one close call, just to step right back into another one again.

But now, at least with a fair court trial and hearing, where all sides would be fully explained and logically worked out as wise Grandpabbie ruled the troll counsel with, just as Bulda and Cliff and every other elder troll taught their tall blond adopted son of the trolls growing up. After sending Anna a soulful communication to ' _lie low and stay out of sight until this all cleared up'_ , Kristoff was a little more at ease as he competently walks forward.

"We'll just tell the truth and everything will be fine, you'll see." Walking alongside Hans, Kristoff slowly attempts to calm the redhead's obviously rattled nerves as the pair are ushered into Egeskov's opulent halls.

"In Egeskov, justice is as swift and unforgiving as the blade of that knight's sword." Prince Hans responds in a depressing demeanor that grows even more pressing with each heavy step his tall booted form took into this Renaissance Castle's imposing interior.

Hans' eyes direct Kristoff's to glimpse a full-length wall painting of an ancient Danish conquering knight righteously beheading an enemy in a bloody horseback battle scene full of violence and mayhem.

 _GULP._

Kristoff self-consciously gulps as he involuntarily reached for his neck, but his hands, like Hans', were tied behind his back.

While similarly ill-fated deer, bison, lions and bears of all shapes and sizes from every part of the globe which had already lost their heads at the end of a Dane's sword stare down at the four men about to go on trial, with forlorn, impregnable stares…

* * *

 _ **Downstairs, a young maiden was totally oblivious to the high drama played above, awash in a cascade of bubbles…**_

"' _Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale, high-igh-igh-high above me._ _Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale…'"_

Trilling through her scales in a most melodic mellow manner, just as her Mama Idun had taught her the Cornish folksong growing up learning her piano lessons, Queen Elsa of Arendelle had been dutifully polishing the silver service for tomorrow's garden party for the past half hour or so.

After the platinum blond and Daisy the scullery maid had been ordered by pinched face Mrs. Folmer to wash and polish the silver service, the pair of young women worked at washing up for hours. The silver polish certainly gave shine to every one of the 8000 piece table cutlery silver set until they gleamed back at her reflection, and Elsa offered the sleepy and yawning young maid whose head flopped to the table more than once that she would finish up.

It only made sense, for Elsa was unable to sleep herself after her somewhat frightening, thoroughly thrilling evening full of excitement and revelations.

But the more Elsa thought about it, the less she believed her own pounding heart.

Was Prince Hans – the young man she was desperately seeking – truly out there in the darkness? Was it truly he who had rescued her from the clutches of that lecherous older brother of his, Prince Didrik? Or was Elsa herself in such a tizzy to wish for him, so enamored of her handsome hero, that she simply made up the fictionalized image of Hans being responsible for stopping her attacker from ravishing the innocent young Queen?

 _Am I truly that much in love with you, Hans, to alter reality just have you be a part of my world? Am I that pitiable?_ The rationalist in Elsa Bernadotte scoffs at her runaway imagination.

In cold harsh reality, Elsa recognized that she had already investigated every corner and nook and cranny of this far-off foreign kingdom's Castle, only to come up with nothing more than a list, a letter, and a portent of old ghosts from her Hans' past life there.

 _Wait…'_ ** _My_** _Hans'?_

All of the pent-up disappointment at the bleakness of her goals, fear of loss of self control and anxiety of rejection of yesterday evaporates now in an ephemeral bubble. Elsa realizes that her love exceeded all her fears, and that made her glad inside. If only in the dream world, the wish her heart made for her Hans Westergaard to appear as her knight in shining armor, gave Elsa's once lonely heart hope and cause to sing.

 _So this is love? So this is what makes life divine…_

Yes, Elsa could no longer deny that she loved Prince Hans in that special way that the lonely unique girl never thought she could allow herself to. It was all because of him that she could even dare dream to achieve that far off wish for a normal life through an extraordinary and unexpected bond.

"' _Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale, high-igh-igh-high above me._ _Oh, sing sweet Nightingale, sing sweet Nightingale…'_ Finishing her washing up, Elsa recalls when she had washed dishes for the first time in her life, with his arms around her thin wispy waist at that ship's wash basin…

Drifting in and out of memories, the beautiful platinum blonde's pitch perfect tone glows at all the scenes of their previous encounters that brought Queen Elsa of Arendelle to slowly, reluctantly but undeniably come to love Prince Hans Westergaard. All of his heroic endeavors, the genuine selflessless he had shown time and time again, his intellectual astute mind, and his gorgeous voice, only matched by his beautiful eyes and perfect physique –

At that especially potent memory when the sheltered young woman had quite innocently glimpsed dashing Prince Hans' stunning rear end in his breathtaking not altogether, the young woman mentally slaps herself.

Her pinkish cheeked pretty face reflected back at her in the silver platter a visage of a woman hopelessly in love. Her icy fingers had polished and re-polished it so many times that it glimmered and shone like an icy lake she froze catching the early rays of sunlight.

Elsa's girlish giggles and swaying body imagining herself ice skating and dancing flawless glides and pirouettes into his arms on that frosty lake with a certain handsome Prince on Egeskov's fjord, abruptly catches sight of an older woman's curious eyes staring quizzically back at her.

"Hello…Elsie, is it? I am glad to find you here. Are you the only one awake, dear? I know it is frightfully early. I didn't wish to bother Mrs. Folmer nor Mrs. Patmore, what with all the festivities they have to deal with. I did not wish to disturb them at this ungodly hour, but I do have quite an urgent request, that perhaps you can help me with, my dear?" Princess Emma of Hanover enters the kitchen with her posh English accent and stately deportment in quite a rushed frazzle.

"Oh!" With a start, Elsa jumps from her mind's wandering as she nearly drops Queen Louise's expensive silver service's teapot to the kitchen floor.

So startled was she to have a surprise guest of this caliber, Elsa's inherited cryokinetics catch the precious silver teapot mid air, lest the valuable, antique piece was irrevocably dented.

The teapot, aglow with her ice powers, responds to her gifted will's command and floats midair through the empty kitchen before Princess Emma's astonished, taken aback eyes.

But before either a flustered Elsa or confounded Emma have the chance to utter a single word, a third female voice rings throughout the quiet, vacated kitchen stealing both their attentions.

"Elsa! Elsa! He's here! I've seen him! But we have to go, right now! Oh! Emma! – I mean… Good morning, Princess Emma. I didn't expect to find you here…" Princess Rapunzel of Corona stammers as she adjusts her excitable whisper to a more polite, though flushed a little, into a timid volume as she races into the downstairs kitchen with Pascal on her shoulder.

The Prussian Princess had been so ecstatic to be the purveyor of such happy important news to Elsa that she rapidly, carelessly, rushed down to the kitchen when she found Elsa not present in their room on the second floor.

But the shaggy short, cocoa brown haired young women was dumb struck silent when the guilty look on her sweet little face realizes that she may have just said too much to be let off so easily from where she was still clutching Elsa's hands, shaking them enthusiastically _._

"'Elsa?' Princess Rapunzel, you cannot mean that this young woman is your cousin Elsa, the Queen of Norway?" At first in total confusion, the plump matronly woman with graying curled hair, and now harried British Royal begins to try to string all pieces of this most perplexing puzzle together.

Calm and collected, regal Princess Emma of Hanover glances from pretty youthful face to face, seeing the familial resemblance, and the closeness between the pair of equals. Astounded by her outlandish conclusions, Emma, in her lavender dressing robe, takes a step backwards to collect herself before speaking again.

"Why is the Queen of Arendelle doing dishes, mopping floors, and polishing silver in my top kitchen like a mere scullery maid?" Flabbergasted, Emma's wrinkled eyes cringe at the very thought of being served tea by the Norwegian monarch's elegantly pale hand, and she shrinks to think how her housekeeper had been working their northern neighbor's Royal sovereign to the bone cleaning fireplace grates, shining boots and scrubbing dishes as a servant obscured in the downstairs portion of their Egeskov household.

The born and raised snobbish Royal Princess quavers momentarily before the pair of guilty bitten lip maidens staring back at her with their wide blue and green eyes.

"Oh, dear. Please have a seat, Your Highness." Elsa, after quickly rubbing her silver polish covered hands on her white serving maid's apron, puts a comforting arm around the slightly portly, older woman. She helps lower Princess Emma to the kitchen chair she herself had been sitting on earlier while the woman recuperates from her early morning shock.

Just then, finally catching up to Rapunzel's faster pace, Olaf chooses to wobble into the kitchen. The gregarious snowman, very friendly-like, goes right up to Emma to gives his heartening intro: "I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs." With a disturbing smile and branch arms extended up to the stunned speechless Princess' overwhelmed shock, Olaf pats her hands folded neatly on her astonished lap and blinks up hopefully.

"You've really seen… Hans?" Giving Emma time to absorb Olaf in her own quiet way, in a tender whisper made of fragile ice, Elsa turns back to Rapunzel, with the hope beyond hope question in her big, begging blue eyes.

"Yes! But we have to hurry if we're to catch up with him and Eugene." Rapunzel nods exuberantly at the fruits of their - _at last!_ \- successful search for Elsa's missing, handsome Prince Charming. Rapunzel giggles gleefully as she watches cool Elsa's flustered face go all deliriously dreamy. The cousins squeeze one another's hands like a pair of lovesick schoolgirls.

"He was real…" Elsa murmurs under her breath, feeling as light-headed as if she were waltzing on a cloud covered, filmy dream.

Rapunzel was glad to see the soft side of her prim and proper cousin that she rarely had seen before in Queen Elsa's regal deportment. It somehow made the blonde even more accessible and sympathetic and sweetly lovable.

"Are you young ladies referring to _Prince_ Hans of the Southern Isles? You see, Queen Elsa, that is, in part, the very reason I am here. You may call me, Emma. How do you do?" The polite, polished Englishwoman - ignoring Olaf's surreal existence to maintain her sanity at this early 5AM hour - states the niceties in between rummaging about in the foreign kitchen cabinets for pots and pans. Orderly Princess Emma was too busy to have let the shock of the appearance of a helpful talking walking snowman in the kitchen ruffle her serenity much.

Besides, from high-class to low, Emma was still basically a cool under stress Brit with a stuff upper lip.

"My husband, Prince Kaleb, was just awakened by the Captain of the Guard to serve as chief magistrate in a court being held in the throne room in approximately five minutes. I have come to collect coffee for my poor husband and his other brothers, rudely rousted from their beds, who will serve as the ruling jury for the trial." The older woman was herself not so quite coherently speaking as she continues to search around the cupboard for proper cups and saucers. She was purposefully overlooking Olaf underfoot, pretending as if he were not there to perplex her methodical mind.

Princess Emma had not made coffee in a very long time, but she prided herself on the ability to at least imagine she could strive to easily make it herself. After all, she could not ask the monarch of Norway – _for whatever reason she was here_ \- to serve in her kitchen any longer and fill out a rush order for coffee and tea.

"Oh, where does Mrs. Patmore keep that coffee grinder?!" Discombobulated with all of the novel gadgets surrounding her, Princess Emma was more of a nuisance to herself. Nonetheless, she doggedly keeps clattering through the drawers and pantry that she, as a fine lady, was quite foreign to.

Elsa and Rapunzel exchange glances, then begin to help laughable Princess Emma collect what was needed for coffee and tea service.

"I'll definitely find the coffee grinder!" Olaf pleasantly offers, though the eager snowman didn't know a coffee grinder from a teakettle.

"Princess Emma—" Elsa begins to dare to ask the query.

"Yes, dear Queen Elsa?" She answers immediately, rather in distraction whilst struggling to open a tin of tea leaves.

"May I ask, what has this to do with Prince Hans?" Elsa had guardedly worded her phrasing, though in her gut she was having that sinking feeling the response would not be a good one. The Ice Queen tries to keep her cold chill down to a controlled level, busying herself with boiling the water on the stovetop she lit.

"Oh, didn't I say? My, it is frigid down here in this kitchen so early in the morning! I'll have to sanction some more coal and firewood for poor Mrs. Patmore to not freeze her talented hands slaving over our morning meals in this chilly environment!" Pleasant Princess Emma says with a chuckle, not quite all there yet in this still early 5 o'clock hour. The older woman in a frantic tizzy gives Pascal a congenial smile and nod for supplying a spoon to the utterly lost in the kitchen Royal.

With a touch of ice magic, Elsa effortlessly wrenches open the tin of tea leaves that Emma thankfully discovered to busy her virtually ineffective hands with something she understood how to do.

"I'm afraid to have to warn you, Rapunzel dear, that the friend you have been seeking, Prince Hans, is among the men going on trial for crimes of sedition against the Crown of Denmark." Emma finally admits in passing as Rapunzel helps her find cups for the coffee.

"What? Why!?" Rapunzel blurts out the question, at the same time a pallid Elsa, nearly dropping the bucket of freshly squeezed milk that she had chilled earlier, gasps out "No!"

The tall blonde clutches her instantly frozen hands to her frosted heart at the serious charges being labeled against her missing prince.

"I too find it unbelievable that any member of royalty would do such a thing. And though I have only had passing acquaintances with Prince Hans a few times in the past, he appeared to be a fine young gentleman, but it seems that he and his cohorts have been red-handed captured by Count Rügen – King Herbert's cousin and trusted representative, you see – in an attempt to help a criminal accused of precious gemstone larceny escape from our dungeon prison." Emma pauses when Rapunzel audibly gasps at the revelation that her sticky fingered love had been taken into custody.

"Yes, shocking, isn't it? It seems an elderly jeweler has been accused of dealing in fraudulent wares sold to young Prince Rune, thus causing much international turmoil between our kingdom and the Czar of Russia whose daughter Rune is – pardon me, _was_ \- engaged to." Emma explains as she brews her large pot of tea, letting Pascal stir with a spoon as she speaks.

"I just can't possibly understand all the fuss so urgently on this day of all days! How very inconvenient of Count Rügen and Captain Jorgensen to tear us from our beds on the very morning of the King's celebration." Proper, orderly and snobbish, Princess Emma was more concerned with disrupting the King's 70th birthday party than having one of his sons – albeit the disowned, unwanted one – on trial for such a serious criminal allegation as sedition against the crown.

"Emma, you have to get us up there! Please!" Rapunzel, quite familiar with personally making coffee as it was one of her over-caffeinated Eugene's favorite beverages at all hours of the night, had taken charge of the coffee making, once Olaf had returned from grinding the found beans. The snowman was covered with more black coffee grains on him than had been captured in the grounds bucket. But he did his best.

Her coffeepot percolating, Rapunzel takes the initiative to fervently ask her new friend in an older Princess for audience at this court trial about to take place.

"I am sorry Your Majesty, Princess. But it's unheard in Egeskov for women to attend a court trial. It simply isn't done." Emma answers quite stuffily, set in her ways as she prepares her tea as expertly as every good British girl knew how. Meanwhile, Elsa had been breaking her icy crust and straining the fresh cream she had brought in and boiled, then quickly chilled the not so homogenized milk that she hadn't had the time to do earlier.

"It's unheard of for us women do a lot of things." The Ice Queen makes her point as she struts her stuff with determined vigor and energy. Elsa smoothly uses her 'magic' frost cryokinetics to not only pour the strained cool milk pail into the fine china porcelain creamer on the table, but also deftly weave and orchestrate all of the mystically dancing in the air utensils and shivering in place saucers to be stacked with their cups on the shining silver tray at her icy command.

"Is the coffee ready yet, Emma? Can I be of any assistance? Oh, it appears that you have quite a few able helpers, already. Good morning, Princess Rapunzel. It's so nice to have you here with us, _Queen_ Elsa." Princess Frederika of Radziwell, second in line Prince Anders' wife, had been secretly listening in on the shocking conversation for the past few minutes and chose this opportune moment to burst in. The Polish princess had come down to the kitchen to lend Emma her support as next eldest sister-in-law, and to inform Emma that the trial was already underway.

"I've heard all about your magic from my brother who had visited Arendelle two years ago. You are a remarkable young woman." The sprightly Polish Princess, though similar in age to Emma, was far more cunning and lively than her stuffy and tidy older sister-in-law. Perhaps it was erudition from her years of learning from her equally cunning and clever mate to subtly influence others.

But even before she met fine-looking, ruling party government ambitious Prince Anders of the Southern Isles, easy to smile Frederika was born a bit more pliable, than simply wise. She had been around her Prince Anders long enough to be well-versed in making manipulated areas work to her advantage.

And, though her sweet ringlets and innocent white flowers always placed in her hair belied that quick wit, Frederika of Radziwell was much more wily than any of her other Westergaard sisters-in-law when it came to bending the rules in her favor, with a saccharine coating of syrupy sugar on top.

"You are as brilliant and beautiful as I've heard, Queen Elsa. It is an honor to finally meet you." Princess Frederika may have had a vested interest in meeting her husband's former first choice targeted fiancée, the Princess of Sweden, named Idun, who rejected him over a quarter century ago. But with Idun sadly deceased, the Polish Princess was at least curious to meet that charming woman's infamous, fascinating daughter as the next best thing.

"We'll get you there, my dears. Don't you worry your pretty little heads, girls." Once considered the catch of the season for her sparkling personality and winning charm, Princess Frederika's charismatic personality garners a smile from a worried Rapunzel and an agitated Elsa, at last.

Frederika, like a dear old aunt, pitches in to help pour out the percolated coffee that Denmark was well known for. She begins to stack several of Mrs. Patmore's famed kringle pastries, kanelstang and direktørsnegl chocolate cinnamon rolls, and snegl strudel danishes onto a glass plate that she adds to the tray that was awaiting the coffee and tea to finish brewing.

"Lesson number one you may probably have already heard from your own dear mothers this old idiom, tried and true." With twinkling eyes, Frederika wags her finger in the air like a mocking old mother hen, putting on quite a performance with her entertaining faces and just as amusing modulated voice. "' _The way to a man's heart is through his stomach_.'" The charming alto, musically voiced Polish Princess says in a conspiring whisper, directed for Elsa and Rapunzel's ears as she hugs each girl close as if she'd known them all their lives.

"You see, my Anders is quite fond of dipping these in his coffee each morning." Princess Frederika brandishes a Danish butter cookie that was in the shape of a pretzel with its extra coat of course sugar browned on top.

As an upstanding Conservative in the recent successful movement to overthrow the Liberal regime of Parliament, this political son was the driving force behind the Schlesweg-Holstein question of autocratic rule. The King's Chancellor, Head Cabinet member, Minister Anders Westergaard may have been cold and ruthless in his business and political dealings, but the cool-headed man had taught by example many of the tricks of the trade of the sweetened deal to his wife of 24 years. And what she learned most of all over the years was how to handle men with honey more than vinegar, having more influence on his politics than the Chancellor realized.

After all, there was a good woman behind every man in that field as well as all others.

"But the sure way into his _mind_ is through the windows of his eyes and ears." The engaging Princess adds in her lilting voice, letting down Elsa's neat bun into a more stylishly mussed, long tailed and shimmering blonde braid.

The four women in the room stare from behind at the beautiful blonde Norwegian Queen's enticing features and demure gaze in the dinner tray's silver mirror, as 'Lesson number two' is set into motion by the masterful politician's wife. Princess Frederika remembers, in the days of long ago and faraway, when she could turn a young man's head to do anything she desired with just one charming and disarming, engaging smile.

Much like the beguiling one etched on Elsa's lovely face as she immediately blushes at the mere thought of reuniting with her dashing Prince again…

* * *

Autumnal greetings, Frozen friends!

Did you enjoy that chapter? It started with quite an adventure for Anna & Hans especially, AKA 'Red' & 'Ginger' – My tongue-in-cheek salute to the greatest dancing pair that ever graced the silver screen of olden days, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.

Fred & Ginger's series of classic comedies/romance were some of the finest examples of legendary ballroom dancing combined with out and out hilarious sparring matches of wills, much like our feistypants Princess Anna vs her bitter rival/enemy/combat partner Prince Hans in their rollicking ' _dance_ '. Check those classic, zany good fun movies of Fred & Ginger out, if you've never seen them! They're a hoot! ^0^

As was this funny choice of a chapter title, I think! Ginger spirited Anna's combative, very vocal relationship with 'Red' Prince Hans is fun to write. I hope you liked their part as much as I did! ^_^ Snuggly Duckling guys and Captain of the Guard Schmidt and Maximus to the rescue! Kind of...

And then in the latter half of this chapty, Rapunzel gets to tell a singing 'S _weet Nightingale'_ / 'So this is love' singing maid Cinder-Elsa of Hans' appearance here in Egeskov, at long last! Unfortunately, cutting their joy short, Princess Emma must inform the dreamy girls that Hans is indeed here, but he's up for trial! Wow! There's a twist!

Yeah! Elsa knows Hans is here! Let's see how wily Princess Frederika's plan works for the ladies to sneak into the King's court to see him on trial for the serious, traitorous crime of sedition...

All sort of drama is afoot here as 'Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" continues.

Thanks for reading! Please give your kind reviews!

God bless you!

HarukaKou


	21. Chapter 21 - Twelve Angry Princes

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 21**

 **"Twelve Angry Princes"**

Hans Westergaard realized that his birth title, ' _Prince Hans of the Southern Isles'_ meant little to nothing anymore in this kingdom of his father's homeland. The sapient young man was aware that he no longer held even the least ranking, minimal position of being the youngest, unwelcome, ostracized son of this realm.

But that _was_ mostly his fault.

Although Prince Hans had resigned himself enough in his lifelong family-imposed guilt of being the conduit of his sainted mother's demise, it had been a rough road growing up. It was coupled by the inferiority complex that his twelve older brothers instilled in Hans since his earliest memories, spurred on all these years by Master Rügen's abject cruelty and their father's aloof indifference concerning his youngest offspring.

But even now as a mature man, through his deepened faith in the Higher Deity and his true love devotion embodied for his ideal lady, Elsa of Arendelle, Hans had almost come to terms with setting aside his past.

Now that bleak, unyielding past was about to bite him with its cold, harsh viciousness once again. But this time, Hans wouldn't have to face it alone.

From some crazy sense of loyalty that the former professional loner thief never claimed to own, Eugene insisted on standing beside Hans and Kristoff and Aged P as they were being led into the trial, if only to show his support for their innocence about to be put to the test in this unwarranted trial.

Although Corona's Captain Schmidt had come to an agreement with Captain Jorgensen to proclaim Eugene's freedom as the Royal Prince Consort of Corona, even upon his cleared name, Eugene refused to abandon his companions.

So even though he was no longer constrained by the law – _Who? What?! Where!?_! – nor would he be treated as a felon by the swift jury trial – _More like a kangaroo court!_ – Eugene would stand at his friends' side, through thick and thin. In doing so, proving that he had learned a lot more from Rapunzel's tender decency than he would ever let on.

"Hey, Kid. You should follow Muscles' example over there. Our Norske friend isn't letting the enormity of this stupid kangaroo court trial get to him. Look! Cool as a cucumber under pressure. Just like yours truly." With a narcissistic click of his tongue, Eugene, who never could hold said tongue, especially in trying circumstances, comments to a worried browed Hans.

The pair of brothers stare in interest at Kristoff Bjorgman's closed-eyed, almost sleepwalking-like entrancement as Eugene murmurs a low whisper to his younger brother. With a shrug, the thief directs Hans to observe how the third member of their incarcerated little ragtag quartet had been wordlessly, almost self autonomously marching forward at a similar clipped pace that they themselves had been prodded on by the royal guards.

The three handsome young men, upon entering the Castle, had been following the two captains of the guard who were hauling Aged P between them down Egeskov's ornate with armor and trophies and paintings, amongst other guy-stuff crowded in its hallways.

"What's up with your blond friend, Rider?" Big man Captain Schmidt had been observing the companions of the erstwhile thieving prince, whom he had been sent by his true ruler, King Friedrich, to fetch and bring back home.

"I think it's a religious thing." Tightlipped Flynn Rider may not have been sure what Kristoff was up to, but he had a feeling that the tall Norwegian Ice Harvester with the tightly closed eyes and vague, disinterested attitude had something good going on. Mystical psychic powers or some such Wind Whisperer magic inherited from his far-out Snow Queen Mom and Nature warlock Dad was something that big lummox Schmidt shouldn't mess with interrupting.

"Huh?" With a perplexed, disembodied look on his rugged features, Kristoff pulls himself momentarily out of his all enveloping communiqué with Sven to make sure he was watching over a certain fuming ginger cutie, for the past twenty minutes or so.

"Perhaps you do not fully comprehend the lugubrious consequences that accompany a judicial trial in Denmark as I do, Storbror." Finally answering, with far more gravitas in his velvety whispered voice than usual, Hans addresses his more blasé brother in a staid tone concerning the somber crimes they had been charged with – traitorous sedition and revolt inciting violence against the Danish state.

"Don't sweat it, Sideburns. As a lifelong fugitive from the law, with my stunning mug on so many wanted posters across the lands, I'm more famous than good 'ole St. Nick." He tries to make light of the trouble, but Hans wasn't buying. "Look, I've been on death row before. While it is, by no means, a euphoric feeling, the criminal sentencing phase of the whole shebang is a piece of cake." For years, the larcenous Flynn Rider had been experienced at walking the tightrope line between the straight and narrow vs the crooked and easy that his talents at thievery usually slipped him through the cracks thereof.

Infamous master lockpick Flynn Rider prided himself on knowing his way around the prison and out of it again. He now gives his fellow accused being corralled into the Royal court docket a nonchalant and arrogant shoulder shrug smirk.

"Right, Schmidt, old buddy?" Eugene turns to the stoic faced, squared jawed, unimpressed Captain of his home Corona guard. The big-boned, moustached man merely rolls his eyes in response, far too accustomed these past five years of putting up with this unworthy scoundrel running off at the mouth, if only for Princess Rapunzel's sake.

"Grrr… We've never been buddies, Rider. And never will be." The large framed, dark haired man contradicts the one Royal member of his kingdom he fell at liberty to disregard.

"Aww. That hurts me right here, Schmidtty." Flynn Rider dramatically places his hand over his heart with that trademark smirk up at his eternal good cop/bad crook rival.

While his counterpart Captain Schmidt was trading insults with his fellow Coronese 'comrade ', Captain Jorgensen's Haeran Army training told him to keep a close eye on the strangely deadpan big burly blond of all the four men.

Jorgensen's cautious gaze spanned over that redheaded Little Lord Fauntleroy and even sleepy eyed Aged P, his pride in his job keeping the wily lot all closely guarded by himself and his Egeskov lieutenants.

As the prisoners are transported into the expansive, high ceiling, red rug laid out, but-by-no-means-inviting throne room, they are led up to a partitioned section of the Royal court where they would stand trial behind the bar. That area was meant to keep visiting dignitaries and certain segments of people above and separate from the 'lower class' peasants that were once allowed to attend the King's court date to witness trial sentencing.

"Well… If they give us a fair hearing, we can explain to them about Aged P's failing eyesight and his honest mistake with the gems." Optimistic about telling the truth in all things, Kristoff was a little more wary of the equanimity of the situation when his suddenly hackled senses could pick up so many bad sentiments and unwarranted bias floating around nearly every occupant of the throne room.

From the intimidating guards to the haughty page boys to everyone who looked down at the group of them upon entering the throne room, particularly the disowned Prince they never thought they'd see here again.

Especially when the wide double doors of the Royal courtroom are swung open and an imposing assembly of men – ranging in ages of young to middle-aged –and all of the striking handsome high-class deportment stride in.

And that sickening, untoward feeling in Kristoff's gut only multiplied by twelve.

That's when a stoic, normally altogether calm, cool and collected Prince Hans Westergaard physically and mentally stiffens with an underlying unease of rattled fear.

Kristoff notes how, with a sucked in breath of tense trepidation clearly written on the redhead's face, Hans' nervous adrenaline shoots up exponentially as he looks up at the entrants into the throne room.

That's when the nearly dozen Royal princes of Denmark begin to stream in through the large ground-floor King's courtroom with a bitter cold attitude surrounding them, directed at Hans.

The politician Prince Anders, the scholar Prince Lars, the Minister of Defense Prince Ivers , the businessman Prince Mattias, the naval Kommander Prince Jurgen, the agriculture Minister Prince Peiter, the King's solicitor Prince Berte, and the world traveling hunter Prince Franz.

As each man, rousted out of his bed at this early morning hour passes by, they scrutinize Aged P, Kristoff and Eugene with displeased, haughty eyes, though barely any of them even gave Hans a sidelong glance. One by one, they take their places at the double rows of seating on the right side of the throne room's raised dais to dutifully stand in as Royal court jurors.

Each of them seemed to purposely avoid eye contact with their youngest sibling on the direct opposite side. With mild interest in assessing his new 'big brothers', Eugene notes how Hans quickly averts his now almost frightened green eyes, his head down. His hands still constrained behind his back dig their nails into his palms' flesh until Hans nearly draws his own blood in apprehension.

With a resigned countenance on his bearded salt-and-pepper features, Crown Prince Kaleb has a rear door whisked open for him by a bored looking, skinny young bailiff, with the pair of spoiled rotten Westergaard twins trailing their oldest brother into the courtroom arguing.

"But Kaleb—! There he is! That cheap, old shyster! Kaleb! You have to convict him! Send that two bit Prussian Jew crook to the gallows!" As fiercely fiery as his orangey reddish hair belied, Prince Rune had already talked older brother Kaleb's ear off as their most powerful brother was dressing in his Royal robes of a judge about the Prussian jeweler's guilt in this matter.

"Ooh." Prince Ruddi, who, as always, was a few steps behind his twin, when he demonstratively clutches his gangly arm around his own fearfully gulping, oddly shaped, long neck at the very thought of a public hanging.

"Rune. Be still." With a few terse words and a raised hand, Prince Kaleb silences his bad tempered younger brother and the tittering scoffs of many of the older brothers in the jury upset at being roused from their beds to serve as jurists. That ill will sentiment was directed at insufferable pariah of the family, Hans, and his shady choice of friends.

For the past few months, the Crown Prince of Denmark had assumed the dutiful rule of the kingdom that his infirmed, bedridden sickly father King Herbert, could no longer perform. As eldest big brother in charge of his clan of a dozen younger siblings, Kaleb also had become quite proficient keeping in check and subduing their varied temper tantrums and blown out of proportion problems, so as not to bother their father the King.

Even if it meant presiding over a quickly arranged cage trial at this ungodly hour of 6 AM at an intent Count Rügen and Egeskov's dutiful Captain of the Guard, Jorgensen's request. If only to get his annoyingly whiny lillebror, Rune, off his back, frustrated Prince Kaleb would reconcile himself to do so.

Of course it would all have to end up being on the eve of the King's important 70th birthday celebration garden party.

 _If we Westergaards didn't have bad luck…_

"But! I want to look that old geezer in his one good eye and give him a piece of my mind for ruining my life with my finicky Eugenia…" The ornery 34-year-old twin with the ruddy complexion and fiery mass of spiky red-orange hair, starts to stalk towards the left side of the room where the four litigants were seated at a close watch by Haeran Army trained Jorgensen and his guard surrounding the accused.

"SIT DOWN, RUNE!" Kaleb's explosive deep voice thunders his brother into quiet submission as a cowed Rune backtracks his way to sit soundlessly beside his chortling in ridicule twin. Rune pushes back Ruddi's annoying wilted tuft of yellow 'sticky-uppy' hair ferociously to vent his own growing anger.

Kaleb then deliberately takes slow steps directly down the front to make his way towards the king's carefully prepared throne that his eldest son only occupied during courtroom situations thus far.

There Prince Kaleb had, on occasions such as these, been given the responsibility of being sole magistrate of the land in his father's stead. 'Judge' Kaleb had taken to sit in ultimate judgment under the Codex Holmiensis Danske Jyske Lov – the Danish code law of Jutland that all monarchs ruled this land with since the 13th century.

Prince Kaleb, after all, was as eldest son of King Herbert of Denmark and Crown Prince heir apparent, one breath away from gaining utter totalitarian control of _Danmark's_ Scandinavian Jutland peninsula and archipelago of over 440 named islands, and 1.4 million citizens. While the drawbacks of responsibility and the weight of the laws resting on his crown for his kingdom was great and demanding, so were the rewards to his day by day growing egoism at the promise of a great rule to come.

 _So why shouldn't I proudly hold my head high when sitting on this throne? It will be mine someday soon._

Every now and then a cold errant thought snaked its way into the normally aggravated and frustrated, yet stable 48-year-old Crown Prince's psyche.

As he sits quite comfortably down in his father's throne, more and more each time, Prince Kaleb deems to direct his glance over the quartet of defendants. His cool gaze nominally glazes over first that the fidgeting old jeweler that Rune was having so much trouble with, then that burly Norske blond brute that Ruddi insisted was an invader from the North.

His blue grey eyes then glaze over the purported thief who had been unduly fortunate to move above his station in life and marry a Royal Crown Princess, and yet sink again into the depths of his sordid former profession. At last, Kaleb's penetrating stare finally lands upon his father's disowned, despised, unwanted youngest child that none of them thought they would ever have to see again.

After all, in a game of lots, Prince Jürgen won the decision to sell dishonored Prince Hans to work as a slave cabin boy for a dirty, old, gnarled and ruthless, washed up Dutch sea Captain with a heading to the other side of the world in a vain search for the mythical fountain of youth.

Now he had made his way back here, wearing the prestigious officer's naval uniform of a Sjoforsvaret Kommander, no less.

 _What deceit and lies have you been weaving to land you in such good strakes in the Navy of our neighbors to the north, Hans? What have you been up to these past two years, little brother? And again you ended up in_ _Norway_ _, the scene of your crimes, no less. That pristine, unsullied land of the midnight sun seems to have some maddening fascination and lure for you…_

"First, we will deal with the more serious case of sedition that Count Rügen has clearly delineated to me for my role in judgment and sentencing over. We will get to your case later, Rune. But now we must wait for the Master to serve as prosecutor in the arraignment of these mens' aggressive and egregious crimes." Prince Kaleb's piercing grey eyes penetrate his statement with a look of disappointed contempt and accusation cast directly upon Hans.

All through the boy's youth, Kaleb, twenty-three years Hans' elder, had kept aloof and indifferent to the unlucky thirteenth child of this realm. He, unlike many of the others, viewed Hans with more disdain for causing their dear sainted mother Queen Louise's demise than the competitive contempt many of his other brothers also held in conjunction along with that blame.

To Kaleb, who had been destined to inherit his father's throne since the day of his birth, Hans was merely an unfortunate accident that claimed the life of the mother that Kaleb, Anders and Lars perhaps, remembered as a vibrant, energetic and beautiful force. But Queen Louise's lively, vivacious nature had lost its luster once the endless multitude of sons came rolling in year-by-year at their power-hungry father's incessant demands.

And latecomer Hans was, by no fault of his own, other than being born, the unfortunate straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

That inward cold tendency that had been passed on by pitiless King Herbert was embedded in every one of his sons icy blueblood veins as well as being hammered into their mimicking minds of their cold frigid father's attitude. Each one wanted to satisfy their grasping parent and gain better placement and control for themselves in this kingdom someday.

That coldness that ran rampant in each of their veins made it impossible for any of them, even detached, logical and intellectual Prince Lars, to ever thoroughly forgive the outcast little boy who so disrupted their world.

Hans took away the maternal first love that, for some of them, was the only light to shine through the twelve young men's frost covered hearts. With her shining, influential light gone, there was little hope that any of her coldhearted sons would ever find the warmth in their hearts to forgive the little, unloved outcast of the Westergaard family that their mother named 'Hans' on the last day of her life, which just so happened to be the first day of his.

While those twelve sons had become twelve angry men now with that frigid fractal of an inherited ice shard mirror running covertly through their lifeforce, kept chilled by jealousy, anger and greed, conversely, Hans had matured into a fine God-fearing young man. The red-headed youth had been separated enough from his father's cool persuasion, under the warm tutelage of the nuns of the Convent of Noble Maidens instead, to be raised as a different man than his older twelve brothers.

The flaming red hair of the mother who baby Hans, however inadvertently, had killed, was a constant reminder to each of her children of what that despicable child had done. They had blamed Hans all his life for taking away what little warmth they ever had in this household, when each young boy and teenager alike of them were told their Mama was never to come home again because of him.

"Tell me… Hans…" It seemed almost painful for Kaleb to utter the wretched boy's name aloud. "Why do you wear the officer's naval uniform of our neighbors to the north in the Sjoforsvaret?" While waiting for Rügen, Kaleb idly questions Hans directly with the sudden query out of curiosity to the young man who was, quite unknown to them, the current Vise Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret.

"Who cares where the Squirrel got it?! Get on with it, Kaleb, so we can get back to sleep!" Garrulous Prince Peiter yells out when a tightlipped Hans quietly keeps his own counsel at Kaleb's inquisitive, probing question. Peiter, like several of his other brothers, may have found some degree of kindness under the influence of their princess wives over the years, but that small minutiae of warmth still did not extend to little brother Hans.

"The proceedings cannot commence until Count Rügen arrives, Peiter." Kaleb responds, though his eyes were uniquely trained on Hans, still waiting for a response.

But Hans chose not to implicate anyone else nor drag the good name of Queen Elsa into this trial where he had pledged to give a plea of guilt for whatever crimes Count Rügen laid before him. Though Anna and Eugene were out of the woods, Kristoff's innocent life may still hang in the balance hereupon should Hans not comply to the evil manipulator's demands.

The gentleman in Hans would never mar the dignity of a lady by bringing Queen Elsa's good name up before this kangaroo court trial nor ever give allusion to the two of them having any affiliation whatsoever.

Especially not even a hint of the sought-after relationship that would never come to fruition now, as far as a despondent Hans could ever see in his dishonored worthless self.

But no such chivalrous strain ran through Eugene Fitzherbert's self-preservationalist psyche, despite half of the same blood running through his veins as Hans and almost every blinking other man in the room, it seemed.

But his half was more controlled by the blood of a hot tempered gypsy who once upon a time instantly melted the cold ice of the King who sired many male children.

 _From 0 to 13 brethren in a month's time? Sheesh, these guys are an intimidating lot of bozos. I don't blame you for never wanting to talk about the clan, never mind getting away from them, Sideburns._

 _They may be mildly charming and blessed with good looks, en masse - I dare say that must be in inherent trait of the Westergaards. Except perhaps for those twins near the tail end… That one looks like a science experiment gone wrong! Your Mama's side of the family definitely!_

 _Anyways…in removed appraisal of the gang of them…my blushing bride will be pleased to find that none of my dear big brothers can hold a candle to my stunning good looks._

Eugene's errant thoughts full of vanity and bluster at his own gorgeous face as he was secretly assessing the horde of princes seated across to the right, are interrupted by the large double doors of the vast throne room being quietly cracked open.

And clandestinely, in slips perhaps someone who could give Flynn Rider a comparative run for his money in the area of both dashing good looks and arrogant vain knowledge of it.

"Didrik! Where have you been?! Antonia said you didn't go up to your room last night!" Already acting like his father, Prince Kaleb angrily berates the lothario scapegrace—the King's sixth son.

When Prince Didrik continues to move in silence, Kaleb runs a frustrated hand through his own dark brown, rather graying hair as his tall and dapper, undeniably handsome younger brother stealthily tries to scuttle into the courtroom unnoticed.

"You look a mess. What the blazes happened to you?" Prince Mattias, who was in the seat beside the empty one in the 'jury box' waiting for Didrik, quizzes the disheveled Prince with incredulity on his thick eyebrows in a throaty mutter.

Fixing his loosened pink tie, classy Didrik wordlessly takes his seat beside his no nonsense businesslike brother. The ladies' man Prince's hair had left its perfectly slicked back with brille cream neat coif to have his hair spread limply across his comely forehead's dark shadowy right eye socket.

As the dark-haired man sits in deeply sullen silence, his gloved hand continually covers what appeared to be a bloodied split lip beneath his dapper handlebar moustache. But Prince Didrik does glance up, beneath the well-placed thick shank of black-brown bangs masking his swollen black eye, across the room to meet Hans' slit eyes from his seat.

Before anyone else could question though, a secretive side entrance to the throne room whooshes open with a blast of cold air. A dark figure chooses this moment to step out from behind the parted maroon colored red wine drapery curtain from the enfilade suite of rooms to enter the Egeskov throne room.

"Master Didrik has been up to his typical abysmal antics with his usual sordid company, no doubt. But it looks like those larks have landed our resident Casanova in a world of trouble this time. I wonder what her name was? The females I have been subjected to meet of late have been rather too spirited and feisty." When it came to his own dastardly brand of underhanded innuendo, Count Rügen of Wurttenberg was a pro.

The sly snake of a villain oozes hidden insults galore as he enters the room, each of the princely brothers immediately coming to attention for their longtime instructor.

"I'm surprised he's graced us with his much _desired_ presence this early morn." The treacherous blackmailer had taken into account each and every one of Didrik's indiscretions over the years and had used them to lord over the King's chief diplomatic envoy time and time again to manipulate his wicked finger on many across the continent.

The daybreak tussle with that devil boy, his little ginger girl friend named 'Anna' and the other commoner cretins at the hidden dungeon exit at the chapel resulted in an unfortunate capture of the group by Egeskov's annoying Captain of the Guard, rather than the summary execution Rügen had intended.

With a foul taste in his mouth for women, who scorned him at every encounter, the fencing teacher had cleaned himself up from all the bruises and ruptured rib cage injury that that devil's little girlfriend inflicted upon him earlier.

But finally, Count Rügen would be able to punish the loathsome creature who had now fallen prey in the manipulating man's masterful trap at long last.

And the law would _have_ to be on his side.

His good fortune in this aspect seemed to be merely due to the red-headed devil boy's magnanimous chivalry for the sake of one greedy little gemstone dealer.

Rügen's flaring eyes and sneering bearded face aims at Aged P, Kristoff and Eugene, and his nemesis Prince Hans most of all, as he takes several threatening steps towards the left side prisoner dock.

There, Captain Jorgensen of Egeskov and Captain Schmidt of Corona were each stationed like twin towering posts on either side of the four ( _Technically three and a half, thanks Schmidtty._ ) defendants.

"Then, shall we begin, gentleman?" Judge Prince Kaleb calls the sleepy-eyed group to order as Prince Jürgen must prod from behind a deeply studying bookworm Lars to pay attention. The studious scholar's spectacles slip off onto Ivers' lap that the brown haired, handsome Danish diplomat on Lars' other side quite complacently rescues and replaces onto his older brother's face.

"Yes, the sooner the trial is over with, the sooner we can get back to our lives." Prince Anders coolly states as the man running for Chancellor takes on the lead responsibility of foreperson of this twelve man jury.

"Master Rügen? Your case of sedition is a rather grave one. Pray, elucidate for us your argument against these three men. I have already considered and ruled from the bench to release Prince Consort Eugene of Corona from his part in this matter under the rule of jurisprudence. The Prince will stand above the law in diplomatic compliance with Denmark's peaceful treaty with Corona to the South. Corona's Captain of the guard has thoroughly assured me that there will be repudiation and a reprimand to the Prince Consort for his part in any crimes here when they arrive back home in Prussia, forthwith." Glad to have at least that distasteful, perhaps internationally insensitive business out of his hands, Prince Kaleb glances from Eugene to Captain Schmidt, who nods.

Kaleb then looks self righteously back down to Eugene, who once again rolls his eyes.

"Please step down from the witness stand, Prince Eugene." Kaleb says disdainfully as he looks down his similarly Roman nose down at Eugene, who uncannily bore a chiselled-jaw, striking resemblance to the man, minus the dignified moustache and salt and pepper beard.

Though Flynn Rider would NEVER admit it.

"Look, I know you're the Boss Man here in your Pop's place. But I made a promise to some good friends back home. So, I'm not walking out on this old geezer or either of these kids, after all we've been through together. Not with that sadistic wacko on the loose in your court slinging false charges and jacked up crimes. Pardon me for sneering at your beloved _Master_ Rügen, but the guy is a cruel, malicious leech. Someone has to say it. And I've got the scars on my back, amongst other unmentionable places, to prove it, if you need further evidence." To Captain Schmidt's apologetic headshake, Eugene candidly continues to speak out against the villain, pointing a finger at his sleek backside, fully ready and rearing to go on display.

 _"_ Please remove your member of the Prussian Royal house from the prisoner's dock so we can get on with this kingdom's affairs." Kaleb ignores Eugene's valiant attempt to bring down Rügen, to dismissively direct his address at Captain Schmidt to collect the misguided young man who was defaming their lifelong fencing instructor and King's cousin.

"Yes, thank you, Prince Kaleb. Let us be rid of this thieving refuse from our noble castle." Rügen murmurs, his evil intentions on Hans more important to him right now than personally seeing that the gypsy's son would not survive to return to this noble household ever again. A raise of his eyebrows to several of his henchman standing right behind the curtain was enough to ensure that once Eugene Fitzherbert left this throne room, he would not survive his return trip back to Corona.

At first Flynn starts to put up resistance - which Captain Schmidt was wont to combat for years – but Hans speaks up at last, interceding.

"Please, don't argue, my friend. Have no guilt in being granted your freedom to fly away. We will stand before the court to _voir dire_ – 'speak the truth'— in the French legal phrase, in hopes that the law must be honest, just, reasonable, and according to the way the people will show the truth.'" Hans quotes words from Denmark's _Danske_ _Jyske Lou,_ the Danish code of law.

Eugene was keenly listening to him for some grandiose secret code scheme that the lowly thief had yet to decipher amidst Hans' lofty words.

"But –" Eugene shakes his head, not quite content with cutting and running, though it was the easiest thing for a sneak thief to do. But he kinda had grown attached to these two kids, never mind that crazy promise he'd made to Big Nose about looking out for his Aged P.

"Just…stay close to Captain Schmidt and the guys on your trip back. May the Lord keep yourself and Princess Rapunzel safe, should we not meet again." With a quick, brotherly smile, Hans whispers a somewhat disquieting warning to Eugene. The Prince of the Southern Isles selflessly advises the ever revolving plan still being hatched in his intelligent head that was about ready to be put into practice.

"Don't worry about us, Eugene. It'll all work out. Help is never far away. Things will start **looking up** …soon." Industrious Kristoff, on the other hand uses his mental powers of nature to send a more positive, clear-cut message to Anna's cousin. Kristoff taps his nose with a knowing smirk that was as reassuring to Eugene as being told Santa Claus was bringing you – _say, a_ _castle_ \- for Christmas.

 _Oh, Blondie you already gave me that one. And all the perks that go with it._

"I hate when people do that." Eugene murmurs as his flatline eyes scrutinize the blond Ice Harvester's signals and then allows Schmidt to hustle him down from the high suspect's podium where the four accused men had been partitioned.

And out in the hall's east wing, just like ships passing in the night, Rapunzel, Emma and Elsa follow Frederika's lead towards the throne room's double doors to peek in, just as Eugene is hustled out the side entrance by Schmidt.

"Now that that regrettable portion of this incident has been dealt with, we can get down to the serious crime of –" Judge Kaleb starts to speak out from where he was eager to put finish to this entire exhausting early hour fiasco as swiftly and succinctly as possible.

But petulant little brother Rune was as impertinent as he was impatient.

"My future life lies in ruination all because that dirty old crook over there stiffed me on the fine piece of jewelry my Eugenia deserved! That crime trumps everything! I brought my case to you, Kaleb, days before old Rügen here came up with his charges against Hans and his seedy friends. So, I think my case should be presented first!" Like an irritable little kid fighting for attention, Prince Rune's reddish complexion only seemed to spread across his entire face all the way down to his neck, apposite to his childish behavior. Even though he was addressing the weighty subject of his broken engagement to the Russian Crown Princess, Rune couldn't help but come off like a spoiled brat.

"Fine, Rune. We'll try your case of the State versus Mr. Agapios Porcius and the fraudulent piece of merchandise you purchased in good faith." Kaleb reads the paper his mealy-mouthed bailiff had drawn up for this trial that an irate Rune brought to his big brother over a week ago, accompanied by the rejected engagement ring as evidence A.

"And don't forget, the old geezer has to pay for reparations for both my injured hurt psyche and the mental distress that he's put my poor Princess Eugenia through!" Rune, rather over dramatically, and thoroughly with disingenuous insincerity adds on his own personal grievances like the true spoiled young man he was.

"Mental… distress…? Yes, the court will certainly take that into account, Lillebror." Prince Kaleb responds in a rather bored voice as he patronizes his impish younger brother's bad temperament once Rune gives his opening statement of the charges.

"Mr. Agapios Porcius. Step forward to the bar, please." The princely judge projects his deep baritone voice towards where aged P, Hans and Kristoff were standing behind an enclosed set of gated wooden posts.

Hans, though his calculating mind was busy, scrambles to help the elderly man's failing legs to stand trial at the bar.

"Yes, your Majesty." Aged P's deeply accented voice couldn't have given a better opening title to the Crown Prince who was so close to ruling the Danish Empire that he could taste it.

"I am merely as yet the Crown Prince standing in as magistrate in my ailing father's stead." But Kaleb's silent smirk is wiped off his face when Aged P begins to speak.

"Oh, then you'll understand me, since you have an old decrepit Papa yourself. But I've got to start by apologizing to your little brother, bless the poor boy. When I hear all the pain and emotional anguish for your lovely little lady caused by my aged eyes failing me on that pretty engagement ring I had set especially for your intended bride, my boy, my old ticker aches." Aged P's demonstrative chest thump gives more of an honest, forthright apology than a deposition of testimony, for having no counsel.

"If you just told me about the problem, son, I would have certainly replaced the imperfect ring at absolutely no cost to you, free of charge and right away." The old Prussian Jewish jeweler calmly starts to explain his no-questions-asked, consumer friendly exchange policy directly to Prince Rune across the aisle who was serving dual-duty as the defendant challenger for the prosecution and a member of the jury in the open and shut case.

"But that isn't the point! My Eugenia was so offended that she won't even talk to me after breaking off our engagement! You know how humiliating a slap in the face that is, old man, to have your fiancé throw this _'dim-witted, substandard, counterfeit ring'_ – her words, not mine – that I was led to believe was of great treasure and import, according to your sales pitch, thrown back in your face! And it was just before I was to present my girl and her esteemed family to my father, the King of Denmark! No excuses for inferior goods and workmanship will do! You deserve corporal punishment!" After shaking his fist at Aged P in the air, Rune's high-pitched lispy voice caterwauls in livid anger at the older man leaning against the dock.

He grabs his twin brother Ruddi by the neck and throttles him violently, slapping his cheeks until the poor man's already addled brain was rattled some more, eyes rolling around in Prince Ruddi's muggy, homely head.

"Rune! Silence in the court! Sit down!" Prince Kaleb was at his wit's end with his raucous brother of the set of twins making an exhibition of themselves.

Schooled, Rune sheepishly takes his seat, with a sputtering, coughing Ruddi thusly collapsing into his ill tempered sibling's side.

"We will have civil discourse in this courtroom, or your case will be dismissed on the grounds of disruption." Elder brother Kaleb lays down the law in his courtroom where a pin drop could now be heard for the silence he commanded from the throne.

"Now, where was I?" Judiciary magistrate Kaleb rubs his pounding temples before speaking again. His eyes open slightly larger when he sees his wife Emma peering in the side door vestibule with the coffee she had offered to fetch for him and the others before he left their bedroom this interrupted, sleepless dawn.

"Ah, yes. So your plea is 'guilty by unintentional accident'. Danish law is clear in received goods and services being paid in full contractual agreement to the full extent of the law. Since your end of the deal has not yet been fulfilled on your side, no matter for what reason, your sentence for passing on inferior quality goods - considering leniency in extradition cases - is twenty-five years in regular prison. That is your sentence. Take the prisoner away." Cold, hard, and precise, Prince Kaleb had served as magistrate of this land for several years now, presiding over many local cases. He was unaffected by any emotional outburst concerning his strict adherence to the ruling law whenever he represented the King.

"Your Honor! I demand to speak a word for this accused man. Under the second line of the Codex Holmiensis, the Danish law of Jutland's guidelines, states that even he, a foreigner, deserves representative council in our court!" Hans astounds everyone by suddenly striding forward to take a place at the bar beside a reduced to sniffling tears Aged P, halting the old man from being dragged away by Captain Jorgensen's guards.

The elderly man realized all at once that the twenty-five years imprisonment meant he would live out the remainder of his waning days behind bars with strangers rather than with his son and daughters and maybe new grandkids back in Bavaria at his beloved jewelry store working with all those sparklers and gold engraving skills he cherished.

Aged P looks up through his jeweler's magnifying eyepiece glass that was continually attached to his eye socket up to the prismatic redheaded hero with a small glimmer of hope.

Hans smiles kindly down at the old gentleman with a generous hand over Aged P's bent over hunched shoulder. "Have I your permission, Sir, to speak on your behalf as I must?" Hans asks in that comforting melodic tenor, until he gains Aged P's sniffled nod in utter gratitude to the refined sophisticate the lowly jeweler called 'friend.'

Kaleb gives a glance to Prince Berte, who, though not a criminal law attorney, was trained by the King's legal team for legislative litigation of his administrative regulatory law in banking and real estate contention issues rather than criminal cases. But at least he had some knowledge of the law.

Prince Berte strokes his Van Dyke pointed brown beard, more interested to hear their reviled youngest brother Hans' defense of this wayward old man than the rest of his brothers.

After a few moments of consideration, the legal advocate of the princely group nods. He had been impressed with Hans reciting the greatly recognized Codex of Denmark law. Berte always had a curiosity for every angle of the law he had entered the practice of.

"Proceed." Meeting his eyes, Kaleb gives his disowned youngest sibling a brusque nod of acknowledgment.

Hans was emboldened to give both Berte and Kaleb an appreciative smile before continuing. Although, neither man returned the warm, hopeful gesture, their cool stares were as imperturbable as the rest of the Westergaard clan gathered with every eye glued upon Hans.

Many other young men his age may have been thrown off their game by such a daunting, intimidating crowd. But not Hans. No, when it came down to it, he knew he himself to be an eloquent speaker of the highest order, in the art of persuasion.

At least, he still hoped he was, for the sake of Eugene's friend's old father.

"Thank you, Your Honor; respected jurists." Hans looks on the twelve apathetic men glaring at him across the expansive room as if they were strangers, rather than the dozen resentful brothers he knew well to never have favored him, sitting on the jury. The svelte young man greets them with a conciliatory nod before addressing the subject at hand he had undertaken.

"Ahem." The redhead clears his throat, focusing all his mind to succeed for the sakes of the pair of men at his two sides. "In the Danske Lov, it has been stated that 'it' – meaning the law – 'must meet the needs of the people and speak plainly so that all men may know it and understand what the law is.' While this Prussian countryman has faced extradition charges for this crime of fraudulent passing on of goods, I can attest as material witness to him being quite forcefully and violently made captive by Count Rügen and his unsanctioned minions. And, I may add as a matter of due course, no one in authority had properly explained the charges against Mr. Porcius in accordance to the law." Hans certainly struts his stuff when it came to expressing in highly educated, noble terms the simple facts. His well composed diction and fine eloquence had each and every one of the audience enthralled, though they would never admit it.

"Should Mr. Agapios Porcius – after relating to us his increasingly ill physical condition and loss of eyesight as of late, as well as his worry and concern for his two unwed daughters, along with pride in his business— which kept this fine upstanding Bavarian citizen and industrious small businesses owner from admitting it to even himself – be permitted to rework the precious, delicately sculpted ring, and set into its specialized gold embossed, exquisite craftsmanship that he is well known for, genuine precious stones and brilliants of even more value and greater worth than agreed upon by the participants originally." Hans begins his 'client's' argument in true lawyer-ish long-winded speech that was quite articulate.

"In this proud court of Denmark, the Danske Lov has been established in reasonable justice according to the ways of people. Would not this industrious hard-working businessman and true artist, who helps drive the economy of a nation with his work ethic tenacity and hand-honed skills, be wasted in a prison cell? Should not we, through noblesse oblige, grant this humbled and aged defendant, honest and true, some beneficent leniency by giving him a second chance, allowing his return to his gifted and talented work under arrangement of payment by giving back to society, and in-so-doing be able to fulfill the receipt of his contract at a later date?" With the eloquent speech of a grand orator, Hans Westergaard gives his plea for Big Nose's father with all the learned deportment and intensity, denoting the inspired terms of the Danish code of law embedded within the heart of this argument the clever man had put to memory and soul.

"Here, here, Hans." Logical Prince Lars breaks the silence by speaking quite out of turn from where he was seated in the front row of the jury pool. He himself, an academic man, had just read and reread the renowned Codex manuscript enough times to recognize that his youngest brother had just quoted from memory some of its most poignant lines verbatim in his moving argument.

Anders, Ivers, Mattias and Jurgen all stare back at Lars in shock as they then turn to their debased little brother across the way with intrigued gazes. Though several of the brothers were coldly raising eyebrows and objections, they could not help but listen raptly to their littlest brother's convincing and stirring oration.

That is, until the destroying angel, the man of sin decries his foul opposition to regain sway.

"No. Not well put it all, Lars! I object resoundingly! That devil is simply trying to bewitch us all with his deceitful eloquence. Remember the Son of Perdition himself was to be the clever ' _falsifier'_. Whereas, the Heavenly Host never stated as such. Your Honor, the defendant's Council is incorrect here. The Danske Codex does not sanction the accused to be allowed to make amends for his criminal behavior by simply replacing the goods without due punishment for this lowly riffraff's attempted thievery of one of our brethren." With the great Accuser reflected in his black eyes, Count Rügen pipes up here, striding across the room to stand as intimidatingly close to the raised bar of the corralled defendants as the loathsome man could.

The evil manipulator saw that the red 'devil boy' had some influence on his well-trained soldier princes, despite his years of indoctrinating them to despise the repellent redheaded creature. So he had to change the tone of the conversation.

"Yeah!" Rune petulantly chimes in, not quite understanding all of Master Rügen's words, but he had a feeling they were in his favor.

Hans turns to give Rügen his most defiant, devastating glare back.

"Master Rügen. I understand your acrimonious rancor against myself. But please, I beg of you, do not circumscribe this elderly gentleman's unfortunate accident and connect it to your antipathy of me. I had hoped that this court of Egeskov still had a fair and just trial system to amply display before the many representatives of European nobility currently gathered here on our premises." With a lofty mien in his fine comportment, Prince Hans responds with high class dignity and raised head; as compared to sneering Count Rügen's dark, unsavory discourse towards his fellow man.

Just then, after seeing to 'Prince Eugene' being led outdoors to the stables under Maximus' charge to keep him tightly under wraps, the Captain of the Corona Guard, Schmidt, returns to the Egeskov throne room, as if in cadence with Hans' thinly veiled warning of outside kingdoms' disapproving view of Danish Law not being carried out properly.

Along their ousted journey to the stables for immediate departure, the talkative thief had apprised his forever good cop/righteous rival of their fellow Prussian citizen, Aged P's situation. Flynn had sworn to stay put with a recovering Maximus and degrade himself to ask – _very nicely_ – for Schmidt to at least go back in to oversee that the court trial wasn't _'bamboozling the old geezer'–_ Flynn's crass words exactly.

"Your Honor. Respected peerage." Hans bows his eyes to Kaleb and his dozen other brothers graciously to present his proposition. "For the consideration of time, if I may be so bold as to address directly the accuser in this matter as I stand in as Mr. Agapios Porcius' counsel, and have your permission to speak on his behalf, with full knowledge of the facts of the case." Hans says with utter calmness and civility as he turns his hopeful face towards the jury seated on the right of the judge on the throne, parallel to where he was still standing at the bar beside Aged P and a meditating Kristoff in the prisoner's dock.

"Well… This is highly unheard of and unstructured in our court system for one prisoner to stand counsel for another. But since this case _is_ of such an unorthodox nature… And there are no other attorneys at hand willing to defend at such short notice…" Overwhelmed, Kaleb could not believe the audacity of this disowned son of the crown, never mind the fact that Hans too was up for trial in another case. But Kaleb could not fault Hans for trying. In fact he was rather impressed by the young man's honorable endeavor.

Again Kaleb rubs at his tired eyes as he tries to make what could be called the fair and equitable decision before speaking.

It was just then that Princess Emma's stately calming figure softly coughs to call her husband's attention to the side vestibule where she and cakes and hot coffee were being offered in her own and Frederika's sociable hands.

"We will take a short recess to deliberate this matter and partake of the hot coffee and tea my dear wife has brought to wake us up to face such difficulty. Gentleman." Prince Kaleb sits back in his throne as Emma personably approaches and serves her love his black coffee just as he liked it.

Giving Hans and Kristoff a toothy grin, though neither, so absorbed in their confab spotted her, Rapunzel was close at her heels to dole out the lumps of white sugar which motherly Princess Emma instructs her with silent finger signals for her husband.

 _Plop! Plop!_

"Why thank you, Princess Rapunzel. I am sorry that our hospitality must drag you, too, into this regrettable situation at this ungodly hour of 6 AM as well." Politely, Kaleb makes a little small talk as he sips his hot coffee and rubs at his headachy brow with a smirked grunt.

"Headaches again, my dear?" Well-mannered with her British accent, Emma passes her coffee carafe to Rapunzel.

"The weight of an entire kingdom at the crack of dawn. Father mustn't hear of this mess on his birthday." Whether it was genuinely caring for his parent's happiness on his special day, or how it would look against himself when the King was finally to come downstairs to greet his visiting dignitaries and guests, Kaleb brushes back his gray streaked sepia hair. Emma sympathetically meets his eyes and rubs her plump comforting fingers to his temples in circulating motions.

"But I'm sure the crown Princess of Prussia understands what that means. Wait…the Crown Princess of Prussia…" As he lets that wonderful hot coffee slip down his dry throat, Kaleb realizes what he was saying. The prince almost spits out the delectable black liquid as he looks to where the sweet Princess with the spiky cocoa brown hair and large, all-enveloping green eyes was pleasantly dropping sugar cubes into his brothers' coffee mugs, blissfully unaware.

"Emma… It's her husband who was involved in this serious matter!" Prince Kaleb whispers almost fearfully of the consequences to Emma's new regal Prussian friend.

"Don't worry, Kaleb. She is stronger than she looks." Already proud to have met such an independent, plucky young woman even in her tender first stages of pregnancy, Emma whispers back in Kaleb's ear as she rather matronly dabs a handkerchief to his slightly damp with coffee splutter beard.

The couple watch the petite girl 'dance' from Prince to Prince on the twelve man jury with her sugar cubes and winning smiles, while sneaking glances at Elsa and her unobservant 'beau' who was in a huddle with Kristoff around his 'client' across the room.

"I should hope so." Kaleb could not, for the life of him, imagine how such a sweet and congenial young Royal Princess could have gotten mixed up with a smarmy, seamy, under-handed criminal thief who was so crass and full of conceit and self absorbed arrogance for his undeniable good looks and overconfident bluster that he himself could have been a Westergaard.

 _Ehh!? Now my head is really hurting!_

Shaking his overloaded head, the eldest crown Prince chides himself for even blithely conjecturing such an outlandish thought and insult to the Royal lineage of proud Danish heralded hereditary.

"Ah, there's my Frederika with some much required coffee and breakfast for us early morning warriors. We must all stimulate the little grey cells in our brains from such dull subjects as the 'all-inspiring and revered Codex Holmeinsis manuscript of Danish code of law.'" Prince Anders mocks with a scowl at the thought of deliberating over the Danske Jyske Lov – the laws of Denmark Civil Code that established uniformity of the law of Denmark since the 13th century.

Anders pings a finger against the hardcover, thick book that brainiac brother Lars had been poring over to brush up on his vast knowledge of the Danske Lov law that little brother Hans had just schooled him on.

"This must be very boring for you, ladies. It is a serious and tedious process that you will not enjoy attending it all. We will be finished with it promptly and rejoin you as soon as possible." Diplomatic Ambassador Prince Ivers politely accepts a steaming cup of java from Princess Frederika, who had calmly walked into the throne room as if she owned the place.

"On the contrary, brother Ivers. We ladies of the court will be a gratified audience to sit and witness the brilliance of our men and the fine justice system of our impressive Danish kingdom's exemplary laws in their execution of seeking truth." Princess Frederika speaks softly with her most charming voice to her comely brother-in-law. She offers a drawn eyed Ivers – who had not seen much sleep himself this night – _for many far more pleasurable reasons_ – one of an array of sweet Danish treats from her platter, which he denies.

However, her own husband, Anders, as predicted, could not abstain from snitching the pair of Danish butter cookies to go with his morning coffee. Instantly that put the dour politician already in a better frame of mind for the sweetness of extra sugar Frederika sprinkled, with coy smiles upon it.

The foreman of the brotherhood jury has his senses quite bowled over entirely when, biting into the sweet cookie, an icy cool cream is poured into his coffee, provided by that new maid with the icy blue eyes and just as creamy, oh so touchable skin…

 _Those eyes…There's something so familiar about her large and exotic, almond eyes…the adorable sweet charm of her little nose… the elegantly graceful shape of her face…that alluring, tempting curve of her—_

"Have I…met…someone in your family before?" Studying the young blonde critically, Prince Anders filibusters a great deal of the lissome parlor maid's time as he stands from his foreperson's seat to tag along with Elsa. The Chancellor places a halting hand on her startled elbow sleeve as Elsa tries to assist in pouring out the cream for Frederika and Emma each time they fill a Danish Prince's coffee or tea cup.

"Perhaps…my mother mentioned being…acquainted…with you in her youth, Chancellor...Sir." Without making full eye contact, Elsa tactfully answers Anders' query without telling a fib, as when she was a teenager, Idun had told her numerous stories about the dashing but cold second prince of the Southern Isles attempts at wooing her, before her father, Agdar, had literally swept her mother off her feet.

She also concurrently avoids Prince Didrik's curious stares at all costs when she distractedly approaches to offer him cream, which the normally well-groomed, flirtatious man silently accepts, without even looking up at her in pangs of guilt.

"Ah, yes. I'm sure I remember her…" Anders squints in attempted recollection with his insincere politician's eyes upon her graceful movements. He feigns memory of another servant from another time in his past that he wasn't particularly interested in remembering.

But 'Elsie the maid' still intrigued Anders' attentions as she continues to proficiently weave through the princes holding their coffee cups out for her creamy service. The tall, dark, imposing Prince could not help but follow her gaze, which he noticed was so intently enamored with a certain redheaded young man in counsel with his new client, Aged P. But Hans himself did not see her adoring expression, nor that yearning look on her face that could shut out everyone else in the room, save for him.

Yet prying, cold and calculating politician Anders noted it, as his sharp mind circumspectly marks and remembers everything his senses were trying to remind him of.

"Why thank you, Elsie. It is extremely kind of you to be ready and willing to serve your lords at this early morning hour with such a cool steady hand." With a pat to her trembling hand before returning to his seat to ponder, the polished politician Prince Anders, quite taken in by enigmatic Elsa's somewhat distracted, sweet and shy, demure smile in return, is yet again outwitted by his coquettish wife.

Princess Frederika knew that dangling such a lovely maiden before his hungry eyes so early in the morning, proffering something sweeter than this Danish sugar covered butter cookie would be more satisfying than that comforting first sip of hot coffee and allow her to exercise a little freedom with her unorthodox request to his now mellowed mood.

"Anders, dear. If you and your brothers have been satisfied by our early morning repast. do permit us to offer those poor men standing trial over there some of these leftover refreshments, before they spoil. The pitiable creatures appear as if they had not eaten in days! That boy appears so thin as a rail that he may not even make it to the sentencing phase of your quaint little proceeding. As good Christians, our society demands that the least we can do is give them a kringle or muffin or two before they wither away. Come Elsie, Princess Rapunzel." Frederika's melodic alto-pitched voice sings with kind wheedling inflections and feminine charm rather than merely asking.

But the wily Polish Princess knew that Elsa had already mesmerized her political man with that appealing, yet reserved enticing smile that scheming Frederika knew she could lead her coffee and tea wielding treat tray hauling team across the way without objection.

"If you must, Frederika. Though, I can't see why you wish to waste your efforts. I must warn you that boy has always been a wayward lost cause. Hmph, imagine dragging us up at this unseemly hour just for Hans and his indecorous cohorts." Haughty Prince Anders mumbles that last bit, as several of his uppity or irritated brethren callously join in his ill sentiment with their scoffs and complaints about their despised youngest sibling, not so veiled nor hidden under their collected breaths.

"Mrs. Patmore's danishes and kringles are too good for the likes of Squirrel and his deplorable, low-class cohorts!" Prince Franz enjoyed Egeskov's resident chef's pastries far too much to be willing to share them with that dreadful, disowned little brother.

"At least the pest will get his comeuppance at last, now that he's gotten mixed up with a squalid crowd of criminals." Haughty Prince Berte practiced in enough law to denounce the illegal class Hans had sunk to now associated with.

"Yeah. We won't be shamed by our black sheep of the family making trouble anymore in other kingdoms, as well as defacing ours, once Kaleb gives him the long, harsh sentence that Squirrel finally deserves." Snobbish Prince Mattias always held other nations' opinion of theirs in high regard, mainly due to his flair for international business dealings.

"Or worse, if Master Rügen gets a hold of him…Hehehe…Maybe it would be more humane for us to vote for that public hanging the twins suggested." Now Prince Jürgen had been in the Søværnet Navy all his life to not be crass with his rough language and chortles concerning the pariah of the family.

Elsa's wide azure blue eyes widen in horror at the gathering of amused men who were either nonchalant, blasé or crude concerning a fellow human's life and death sentencing, never mind their own flesh and blood. The thoughtful young woman was appalled to feel, in the very air entrenched in Egeskov's throne room, the Danish princes' deep-seated hatred of Hans. She listens, astounded as to the angry tone in one after another of their cold taunts and rude comments from where she was just finishing serving the cream for their delivered morning coffees.

The Ice Queen inwardly shivers in fear, looking into each man's chilly eye upon Hans and seeing that their resentment had been so inbred into their psyches towards their youngest brother. How could he receive a proper hearing and a just ruling with them as jury? Their anger and resentment towards him was so palpable, she doubted there would be little familial lenience in their already prejudiced decision about his fate. Kristoff and that older gentlemen would suffer beside him, as well, if Elsa herself did not act.

 _But how can I, one insignificant person, move other people's hardened hearts?_

Frederika leads a trembling, insecure in her own mind Elsa by the arm with a wide-eyed Rapunzel trailing behind with her sugar bowl to the opposing platform. There, the three remaining defendants standing within were conversing while stoic Captain Schmidt and Captain Jorgensen kept a personally eavesdropping Count Rügen paces away during the short recess.

Elsa, as if in a wispy illusion, had to keep every one of her icy safeguards in check with each gaining step as she watches Hans address the pair of men, discussing some subject of imperative import, in the serious yet velvety tenor tone that she loved to hear ringing in her ears.

With each step, Elsa squeezes Rapunzel's free hand in her chilled frosted tipped ones. She and her cousin follow Princess Frederika to approach the turned back of the eloquent, well spoken, slender redhaired man.

Prince Hans' stunning rear appeared every bit as attractive as his breathtaking profile face with his celestial nose and delicious sideburns that still sent chills up a besotted Elsa's well chilled spine…

With a poke from a stunned silent, wide-eyed Kristoff, who had been so engrossed in his other extrasensory mission that he had not picked up Elsa's mental signature even at such a close range, Hans was just about to turn around to greet the entourage of ladies, though he had seen only Frederika in his peripheral vision serving coffee.

The Danish Prince starts to spin around on his well turned tall black booted heel…

 _When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?_ Psalm 56:3-4

Her every tingling tensed senses confused and shattering like crackling shards of frozen fractals all around, the Ice Queen's fearful, tearful eyes glimmer with hope intermingled with anxiety and pleasure and distress. All these emotions were trapped in the orbs of her azure blue eyes in a thousand refractive ways as she recalls those men's words, replaying over and over in her head of their unfamilial cruelty and embittered coldness…

 _'Moreover, I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them; and I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a tender heart.'_ Ezekiel 36:26

' _Therefore do not fear them. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.'_ Matthew 10:26

' _So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.'_ Isaiah 41:10

 _'For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you_.' Isaiah 41:13

Hearing these choice, encouraging Biblical verses echo through the spiritual girl's head to drown out the princes' divisive scathing denigration of her love, Elsa's eyes flicker from their instinctive fear into an inspired determination.

With a glance at her elegant, bluish long finger-nailed hand that tightens into an assured fist, Elsa's trembling lips set into a definite straight line of resignation.

Queen Elsa of Arendelle turns on her maid's uniform stocking-ed heel and runs from the throne room, the creamy milk frothing over her pitcher spilling over in milky ice puddles on the red carpet ground when she does.

"Snowflake?" The Danish prince looks at the wind gusted slammed shut door with deeply knit brows of instant concern and soulful recognition of his elegant, delicate Queen whom he wished would be anywhere but here.

 _It WAS her presence I felt here before. But she wants nothing to do with me…Can you blame her, Hans? Disowned, disgraced, and now I am publicly reviled for being a delinquent aberrant criminal in my own former kingdom. How dare you had ever even momentarily fantasized of anything more between your pitiable self and the unblemished Royal Queen of_ _Norway_ _?_

His worst nightmare written clearly on his dashing features, Hans Westergaard was confused by the sudden appearance and just as sudden disappearance of the woman he could no longer deny in his heart that he loved.

Despairing himself, Prince Hans grips the bar firmly, trying to regain his composure, while staring forlornly after where Elsa had just disappeared from.

Vigilant and vengeful Count Rügen notices his discomfort, and comes close to chopping off Hans' other hand that was still clutching the bar, with his swiftly extracted sword swinging down hard on the wooden ledge.

 _" 'A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil…_ '" Even Lucifer himself quoted verses of Scripture for his own dastardly gains, and Rügen's pretentiously loud-spoken outtake from Proverbs of the Old Testament proved that fact in this instance to make his point well affecting to his listeners.

"Now don't get a big head, Devil Boy, or I'll have to openly slay you on the spot. Even if you have tricked your brothers into allowing you these trial privileges, I know that you are still **my** prisoner here." With these venomous words, Count Rügen turns and hisses with bared teeth at Hans directly in his face with a meaningful slam to the fenced in platform stand.

The darkly angry menacing man leans over the wooden partition and whispers for only Hans' ears to hear: "Once they release you to me after this mock trial, after I'm done with the torturing, there will not be a single part of your scrawny body that will be left interested in pretty little blonde maidens ever again." The evil man drips raw malice and venom as Kristoff has to be restrained by Captain Schmidt not to intercede and come in contact with vile Count Rügen as Captain Jorgensen takes a stance between Rügen and Hans.

"Master Rügen, please withdraw your weapon and stand down so we can continue this trial and quickly wash our hands of its stench. Ladies, put away your confections and take your seats in the audience in the balcony if you must. Just please let us get on with this time consuming mess so we can continue on with the rest of our busy day for more important affairs." Prince Kaleb dismissively commands from the throne at the contentious confrontation between the men.

Count Rügen, with his rival Jorgensen breathing down his neck at Prince Kaleb's backing, is forced take a step back from Hans and slide his sword back into its sheath.

"Stench, indeed." The vitriolic villain venomously taunts his longtime adversary of a ' _red devil boy'_ with some devilry of his own. "We will cleanse the air of Satan's sulfur and brimstone once I rid this land of King Herbert's final mistake." Count Rügen murmurs beneath his breath and begins to cackle, feeling the end game for repulsive Prince Hans Westergaard in sight.

He walks several paces away with a smirk, certain of his own prosecutorial skills to win the day against the already prejudiced jury against the young Prince. The Count would simply have to stoke all twelve men's angry flames of memory he had implanted since their youth, as he always did along the way.

And once and for all, he would have his revenge.

Rügen's glare encompassed all twelve of the princes on the jury, plus the Judge Magistrate sitting on the throne's ruling bench in this criminal trial with his wheedling persuasion yet again.

The collected Princes of Denmark did not disappoint their Master.

All together deriding, mocking and condemning Hans as the exiled outcast he was born to be, the Danish Princes added up to twelve angry brothers. They all still scorned with disdainful contempt down at the detestable boy who stood in the crosshairs of their harsh verdict, with almost palpable spite and vengeful, unforgiving malice for what he had taken away…

* * *

Sjoforsvaret – Royal Norwegian Navy

Søværnet - Royal Danish Navy

Danske Jyske Lov – the laws of Denmark and Jutland Civil Code

Kringle - Danish type of powdered sugar covered donut

* * *

Hello, Frozen friends!

I hope you enjoyed this courtroom installment of the drama going on in Hans' homeland of the Southern Isles! Those 12 brothers of his may have found some semblance of kindness concerning their wives and polite manners when it comes to strangers, but they all have that icy cold resentment for their youngest brother running through their veins.

Poor Hans! It seems, even after all these years, they still blame him for their dear departed Mother, Queen Louise's demise! Between their Father, King Herbert, who yet has a sliver of ice penetrating his heart to be frosty and domineering and out for world power; and evil Count Rugen, who's been there instilling hatred for Hans and rivalry between the princes for decades, Hans & Kristoff & Aged P are sure to be convicted!

But maybe there's an icy maiden of light to shine the truth of love and forgiveness upon frigid Egeskov's cold, harsh justice system...

We'll have to wait and see what Ice Queen Elsa has up her elegant sleeve to rescue her Prince Charming from his ill fate!

Thanks for reading! Your kindly reviews are welcome! ^_^

God bless!

HarukaKou


	22. Chapter 22 - Every King Needs a Queen

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 22**

" **Every King Needs a Queen"**

The dawning sunrise's red and orange hues melded with the night's indigo purples to define the breathtaking word called 'morning' at the end of a Scandinavian summer.

To glimpse such a mesmerizing sight of God's creation at its daily start was a rare gift indeed. Particularly for a mere mortal who had the stunning vantage point of being skybound amidst the cloudy splendor of first light.

Right now though, Anna of Arendelle was not in any mood to appreciate the timeless, pristine beauty of nature's landscape. Not when it was taking her _away_ from the drama and adventure beside her love that the feisty Princess always craved.

"Sven! Go back, go back, go back!" Anna's voice was growing hoarse from arguing with the apparently closed-eared creature beneath her for the past half hour. "Come on! We've been tucked-tail flying away, for like, forever! Can't we go back yet?! Where are you taking me?!" Thousands of feet above sea level, fearless-of-heights Anna was not at all bothered by the high speed flight that Kristoff's reindeer pal was zooming along that may have distressed many another young woman her age.

But Princess Anna had climbed so many tall trees, swung her supple body over numerous high window washing lifts and thrown herself acrobatically down endless railings of the castle's long spiraling staircase to be able to claim that she had grown up more fearless than most.

More than that, she was a little crazy.

 _I love crazy…_

"Oh, that Red! We came all this way to find out if you weren't dead, and the next thing we know, you end up on trial for your life! You are the most maddening man in the entire universe! And you are not much better, Kristoff Bjorgman! The two of you plotted together back there to deposit me on this kidnapping reindeer. Whew! Men!" Anna's angry red face was as fierce as the sun's radiant rays she was ensconced within at this high altitude.

"Sven! If you don't stop on the next mountaintop or rooftop or treetop or whatever next top stop you see out there and put me down, I swear I will jump!" After giving the reindeer bull's shoulders a fierce pounding in frustration, Anna releases Sven's reins in some irrational threat, no longer holding on.

With her arms spread wide, the gutsy ginger was riding at over sixty kilometers an hour through the tempestuous fierce winds whipping out her windblown mass of hair. It unravelled her already messy braids apart until her curled locks were all askew, much like her bed hair was every morning.

With a dropped jaw, Sven's grey furred head spins around to look at her in horrified shock at the childish ultimatum.

 ** _WHOOSH! SPLUNK!_**

"That's more like it." Anna's sulky crossed-arm features are pleasantly surprised when Sven acquiesces to her wishes and lands atop some broken down fortified castle tower turrets. The obstinate 'look no hands' girl comes to a rough stop onto Sven's back, the reindeer opting for safety to deter her recklessness. Sven snortles at her with a furrowed brow reprimand.

"Don't look at me like that! You've been acting more like _that_ Kristoff than yourself, Sven! Bossing me around! Telling me what to do in that _'I know what's better for your own good'_ tough guy stoic silence… Where the heck have you brought me, you silly boy?! Seriously, this abandoned castle looks so old!" Rustling the rangifer's furry head, Anna had become acquainted with Kristoff and his best friend Sven intimately enough over these past two years of being almost constantly together to get a weird feminine intuition about this whole affair.

Mellow Sven never bossed her around. Sweet Sven would try to comfort her rather than ignore her command. Kindhearted Sven would certainly have turned around after the first five minutes of Anna's inveigled wheedling, mainly because the big bull reindeer was really a softy inside.

Not that the current interloping occupant of his brain, his lifetime buddy – however necessary and welcomed he may have been – wasn't malleable against this particular perky Princess' persuasions.

At least, not for long, her extreme threats of self inflicted destruction soon brought the stubborn man around to reveal his presence as Anna predicted.

"Kristoff Bjorgman! That is you in there, isn't it?" Even with the Snow Prince purposely closing their open mind link down this past half hour or so, Anna's love for her mountain man was so great that she could still sense his warm heart anywhere.

After a few seconds of eye to eye contact, like a reindeer caught in the headlights at Princess Anna's third-degree, 'Sven' nods with a guilty gulp followed by a familiar side.

{"Man, you're good. Yeah. It's me, Anna. Don't blame Sven. I was the one who told him to get you out of there. Look, someone had to go and find us help. No use all of us getting caught by these rotten Danes." The dam of Kristoff's mind link opens up a crack as he mentally confers with his blushing bride.

Sven nuzzles Anna's cutely jutting out chin before he canters over to the other side of the Castle's high tower roof, scanning the skies as if in search of something on the hazy morning horizon.

{"Just take a break for a few minutes here beside Sven, Baby. Come and sit."}

Sven had flown so far and so fast without letting up that the rangifer was totally exhausted. He slowly walks along the ledge of the turret, then kneels down to take a breather from his high velocity flying sprint whilst continually keeping up his scan.

No longer as vexed as she was curious, Anna immediately rushes to the opposite edge of the rugged stone battlement where Sven was cautiously looking downward over the balustrade.

"So! What are we looking for!? Oh! Maybe I can climb down to that rampart shelf to get a better view without that mountain blocking." Kristoff's 'feistypants' was unperturbed by the dizzying vertigo to glance at her surroundings high above the hundreds of feet deathly drop.

Without a second thought, Anna pitches herself over the open air gap to land on the secondary lower-level battlement several feet below. There, the vivacious girl had been so impetuous to hang over the loose ledge to get a better view, she didn't realize that she should not put her foot on the craggly 14th century ruins of the abandoned fortress to blithely call back up.

"I can see past that mountain from here! Whoa! That's a long way down..." The plucky young woman then made the unfortunate mistake to look over the dizzying precipice edge.

Anna begins to sway in the brisk morning breeze to and fro as she blinks, rubbing her misty eyes.

Soon after Anna had left the confrontation at Egeskov Chapel, up to now, protectively stoic Kristoff had been a symbiotic presence in his buddy Sven's receptive mind, but an irate Anna was quite unaware.

{"ANNA! Get back from that ledge!"} Suddenly noticing her wooziness, Kristoff's intensely anxious voice echoes deep inside lightheaded Anna's heart as Sven clumsily scrambles to his cloven hooved feet.

From where Sven had been taking a breather on the parapet to gain their bearing and stake out the surroundings whilst searching the skies, a fearstruck Kristoff watches the klutzy girl take an unforeseen tumble off this castle ruins' high tower.

But the adventuresome, reckless gal was out of her husband's desperate reach…

"Do hang on, young lady!" That's when an older man's low mellow voice calls out through the early morn, completely out of nowhere.

Fortunately for the stumbling girl, this stranger upon his own white invisible winged steed rises up from the blind spot beneath the battlement parapet of the old medieval fortress castle of Essendrup in Samso.

King Friedrich of Prussia had been itching to try out his mettle as a hero for a great many years and never had been given the chance, until now.

"Friedrich! For Heaven's sake, don't let her fall! Oh, do watch her head! Do stay erect on your steed! Oh, Mr. Big Nose, help them!" Somewhere close to the disorienting scene, Anna hears a woman's officious alto voice penetrate the thick fog as Anna shakes her dangling upside down head for all the blood rushing to it.

She dangles loosely through the sky all topsy-turvy, until the orangey princess feels a sudden grip around her bloomer-exposed legs. And without further death-defying, daring ado between the King and his Snuggly Duckling subject, Anna was suddenly looking into the not-so-mentionable complexion of a strange man with a bulbous big nose, smiling back at her.

"Hi, I'm Big Nose. Pleased to meet you." The most pleasant of the pub thugs introduces himself as he hangs equally inverted as Anna was flying through the skies.

"Wow. You're pretty impressive, King Fritz! Eugene will be surprised you've got a lot of chutzpah like him! Ole Flynn must be rubbing off at the palace." Riding Nýsnær, Big Nose commends the older father-in-law of his Snuggly Duckling 'compadre', Flynn Rider, in the thief's disrespectful name for the Prussian monarch Flynn oft mockingly portrayed as ' _past-it'_.

King Friedrich of Corona had always been peaceful ruler, dallying in the liberal arts of theatre and playhouses, erecting Roman stylized architecture buildings and involving himself in all of the quiet _moderne_ hobbies that the Romanticist could partake in. He specially indulged in the arts at that low point in his life to take away the seventeen years of sorrow that he and his goodly wife endured at the loss of their single precious bloom named Rapunzel.

And now, many fortunate reunited years later, when those Snuggly Duckling chaps and that mysterious man named Job, whom their own sweet Princess Rapunzel had befriended, showed up on their Corona Palace doorstep explaining how their daughter's chosen mate, Eugene, was imperiled, Friedrich sprang into action.

His dearest Arianna would always be there at his side to make sure that her Shakespearean enthusiast would endeavor to keep his weak heart strong and his headstrong fancies subdued.

So when a trio of white flying horses had come by wing to her secretly daring, longing-for-the-adventure-he-never-had, steady and strong husband, Queen Arianna hadn't the heart to keep her beautiful dreamer down-to-earth for once.

Even if her recently bedridden King, who never much traveled outside of his beloved Corona, had a terrible sense of direction.

Not long into their journey now, this trio of mystical Snow Queen horses, whom the Royal Prussian monarchs had requisitioned yesterday from those raucous pub friends of Rapunzel and Eugene, diverted their flailing course. The flying horses named Snaedis, Nýsnær and Flurru seemed to have their own travel plans that took the lost Prussian pair of rulers and Big Nose, who was of little directional assistance, back southward from their misdirected northerly route through Denmark's skies.

That was when intuitive Kristoff picked up their friendly signals on his Snow Prince 'radar' and had brought them in towards Anna's bright signal. Of course, he didn't account for his clumsy wife to fall off the roof.

"Anna! I've got her." His edgy voice actually vocal through the reindeer bull's throat, intermingled with Sven's deep strains, Kristoff was shows his worry as Sven gathers Anna from Big Nose and King Friedrich.

The Wind Whisperer, from where he himself was physically incarcerated, until now had maintained a radio silence of sorts with this soulfully bonded psychically linked mate. But in his panic, Kristoff's great love for his girl revealed another new aspect of his inherited powers that he had never considered before, as this man of nature verbally speaks through this new avenue of his Wind Whisperer gifts.

In her dizzy confusion, Anna's senses could hear Kristoff's audibly worried/wobbly/nervous voice ring in her ears, smell Sven's pungent scent in her nostrils, see Big Nose's kind eyes on the disgusting blighter's face, and feel a warm, strong, paternal fatherly presence lift her up, followed by a quick motherly embrace. Swooping in to aid the rescue reindeer, Anna is righted by many hands to the solid ground of the higher parapet balustrade atop Sven's steady back.

"I always advised Idun that Agdar was a puzzling, mysterious quantity. Oh, Friedrich, perhaps we should have gone up there and taken these girls under our wing long ago. Look at her, a Royal Princess, running wild." One of the few people in the world aware of Elsa's icy secret, Queen Arianna of Corona observes on this second child's 'interesting' rearing to her husband, taking note of Princess Anna of Arendelle's untamed mane of frizzy hair and the dizzy eyes rolling around in her addled head.

The prim and proper Queen gazes over to where Anna was clinging to that reindeer's back as if the hairy animal was her lover.

"Are you all right?" Queen Arianna asks, her tender voice full of worry as she brushes Anna's wild hair back from her eyes and pulls her away from Sven.

"Mama? Papa? I thought you were up in Elsa's Ice Castle…please don't be mad at me for riding my new bike down the stair railing…" In a groggy headspun daze as she phases in and out of present and past realities, Anna guiltily murmurs to her parents when that same sweet flowery scent that always accompanied her wildflower mother's healing reassurances after her strong Papa's gentle rescues had the ginger girl thoroughly disoriented.

"No, poor child. It's your Aunt Arianna and Uncle Friedrich. Oh, Friedrich, she looks just like Idun at this age." After landing on the parapet of the castle ruins, Queen Arianna continues to caress Anna's face and straighten her mussed hair, like Idun's big sister always did for her boundless wildflower lil' sis. Arianna recalls, with tears in her eyes, how her hoyden of a younger sister would get into such similar scrapes as a teen.

 _Idun… I miss you so…_

"Anna, dear. It is you, isn't it?" After several moments, Arianna automatically begins to brush back the ginger's erstwhile locks into the pair of fluffy orangey piggytails. The Prussian Queen's heart had memorized every line of the small cute face of her namesake from that precious daguerreotype family photo Idun had sent her years ago.

Arianna had treasured that loving picture of Idun's ideal family in Arendelle when her adored little sister had been featured in the Arendelle Gazette. The naval times in Arendelle had used the early form of photographic new-fangled invention to show their Admiral King and his precious Queen with their young daughters up in Norway.

With a forlorn expression, the Queen of Corona remembers how she had pored over that newspaper article clipping nearly every day since her sister's sudden and terrible, unforeseen passing all too soon, over five years ago.

"Yeah, it's her. Your niece, Princess Anna of Arendelle. But we don't have any time to waste! You guys have got to get to Egeskov right away to speak with the King about Aged P. By the way. Thanks for the save." 'Sven' says in an urgent version of his fluctuating deep, yet high, reindeer tones.

A shocked out of her reverie, gasping Prussian Queen clutches her dizzy headed niece to her chest and shrinks away from the bizarre furry creature sticking his face into the tender scene.

"Friedrich! Do something! That reindeer is talking to me." Queen Arianna had always been much too uptight to allow her orderly mind to permit a talking animal to exist.

 _Flying ones, perhaps. But talking…_ The sane royal woman had to draw the line somewhere as she agitatedly tugs on her husband's arm.

King Friedrich looks from his fretful wife to Sven, then back to Anna.

At Anna's laughing eyes as she giggles slong with Big Nose, the older King begins to chortle in secret delight that superseded his disappointment that this Danish Castle ruin was not Hamlet's renowned setting of Kronborg.

"Oh, don't worry, Aunt Arianna. It's just my new husband, Kristoff." Anna proudly states, recovering her senses in her shared smiled camaraderie with the Prussian uncle she had just met, and instantly liked.

Even in her dizzy, waking up delirium, the ginger was pleased to announce to the world the fact that she and her true love had been recently married. The thought of her hunky ice harvester/mountain man/Snow Prince of a gorgeous guy was in her mind's eye as Anna reaches up to pinch Sven's cheeks lovingly, not realizing her relatives were seeing only Sven.

"What a coincidence! I just got married too! I miss my Hilde already! I sure hope she and the other guys didn't get lost, too." The Snuggly Duckling resident romantic sighs, audibly dreamy for his newlywed special little lady.

Ignoring the funny litttle man, for they were too boggled and aghast by Anna's inconceivable words and inexplicable actions, King Friedrich and Queen Arianna blink at Anna. Birds whistle by where the group were atop the high-altitude castle roof.

The royal couple wonders at their niece's questionable upbringing as they exchange flabbergasted stares in total confusion with one another. Anna again astounds them with an adoring hug and whispers in the reindeer's ear as she clings to his furry neck.

"We'll explain on the way." Kristoff/Sven senses their discomfort and gives Friedrich and Arianna a toothy grin. Sven then swings limber and lithe Anna, still embracing his furry neck, over his shoulder until she easily lands on his back, entangled in the reins just so.

"The monkey trial here is just getting underway. Follow me." Deeming that Anna would be safe under the King and Queen's protection to return to Egeskov, Kristoff/Sven explains over his shoulder. He speaks in baffling dual terms to the flabbergasted monarchs of Corona, and moreover the pair of flying white mares automatically under their Snow Prince's noble command.

King Friedrich shrugs and moves towards his steed named Flurru, who was pawing impatiently to fly off.

 _She's just like you, all over again, Idun, my untamed little sister._ Queen Arianna envisages a teenaged Idun in Anna as the older woman approaches the white horses the ginger girl was feeding.

"Friedrich. Isn't she the very image of my dear sister, Idun?" Queen Arianna says with smiling tears formed in her blue violet eyes.

"I actually think the child more bears a striking resemblance to Agdar, God rest that good man's soul. I always was of the opinion that it was their Elsa who was the likeness of your sister, my Flower." Friedrich answers in all honesty, his thoughts free to say anything that popped into his exuberant head way up here in the stratosphere.

"Hush, Friedrich. Do I not know the look of my own dearest…lost…Idun? Oh Idun, if only I could see you once again…" Arianna grows melancholy at the unbidden thought of losing her only sister, now deceased for over five years.

The Swedish Royal woman self-consciously straightens her mussed long mane of cocoa brown hair back behind her shoulder. She involuntarily ties it up in a quick bun in that way her King recognized, by now in their quarter-century spent together through good times and bad, his orderly and organized love would resort to. Queen Arianna had that habit to toy with her long silky locks of hair in an attempt to straighten her tossed and tumbled thoughts as well.

Arianna was feeling particularly sentimental at the sight of Anna. But such unnecessary sentiment was far more than self-permitted for this down-to-earth prosaic woman who had survived far too many disappointed, sad years to let her emotions affect her serenity.

Though right now, Queen Arianna was gratified to have her husband's large, stable hands brush her cheek with all of his loving sympathy offered by his eyes across the flowing airwaves of the cloud streams surrounding them.

"Oh, you will, Aunt Arianna!" Overhearing a stray word here and there from where she was across the sky astride Sven, Anna pipes up matter-of-factly, interrupting the tender moment between husband and wife. "Just as soon as we get done with this crazy, unfinished business in Egeskov, I'll bring you two back up to Arendelle to visit Mama and Papa." With a great big smile, Anna was so busy reacquainting herself with Nýsnær, Snaedis and Flurru, the Snow Queen's flying mares that the younger Arendelle Princess spoke in more careless, offhanded terms than her propriety-ridden Aunt expected about such a sensitive subject as her deceased parents and a proposed visit to their gravesite.

Arianna misconstrued that little brassy Anna was referring to escorting her Aunt and Uncle to King Agdar and Queen Idun's graves on that Arendelle hillside where the lost at sea's Norwegian Royal couple were memorialized in mortis.

"There! These girls are all refueled and rearing to go!" After she had fed them some of Sven's ample supply of carrots and water from his sacks in preparation for their trip to the Southern Isles, sprightly Anna smacks Sven on his tight rump after sweetly rubbing the chins of the appreciative whinnying trio of white flying horses.

"Hey! Not so hard! Or we'll both end up saddle sore, Baby." Flinching where he was being prodded into the Egeskov courtroom, Kristoff's psychically projected flirt via Sven's wobbly voiced lips made for some raised eyebrow looks to shoot again between the older King and the Queen, then back again at their most intriguingly strange younger niece from Arendelle.

"Friedrich, that reindeer is speaking again." Rubbing her disbelieving ears as she closes her eyes, Queen Arianna was more distressed by this coy exchange between her little niece Anna and the furry friend of St Nicholas than anything else.

"Then maybe we should listen to him." King Friedrich quietly prods his stuffy wife, with a bemused smile on his gray bearded face as he moves towards a willing Flurru.

"Ha-ha! Good one, King Fritz!" Big Nose, in his worry for his imperiled Father, often turned to humor to help ease his nervous tensions.

"It's a long story. With all due respect, there's no time to lose now flapping our jaws! You've got to get moving at full speed, ladies. Time's running out." In his direct, to-the-point way, Kristoff/Sven answers a tad rudely to the stunned Prussian monarchs before he addresses the three white mares and the need for alacrity.

"Neigh! Whinny! Whinny!" Nýsnær, Flurru and Snaedis respond positively to their Snow Prince's call to arms.

"All aboard!" Good little soldier Anna was ripe for adventure, with all previous grudges and anger at her guy faded into the mists. The feisty gal was itching for a new and exciting adventure with this great race on. She urges her old aunt and uncle and Big Nose onto their waiting horses on the stone castle tower's ruins.

"Choo-choo!" Eccentric King Friedrich of Corona answers his useful niece's enthusiasm in kind with the air hold engineman's cable horn, the railway being the romanticist King's latest hobby of interest. King Friedrich wanted to set up a railroad system for all of Prussia, much like the Wild West steamrolling through America's New World that the excitable older man always longed to visit before he died.

"Yeah! You've got the spirit, Uncle Fritz! I think I'm going to love you to bits! Come on, Mr. BN! Giddyup Sven!" Heart-on-her-sleeve, emotive Anna immediately takes to her fun-loving, kind-eyed uncle as she and he both sit upon their rides with all the talk of cowboys and Indians and wide-open unexplored lands in their heads as they ready to take off for the vast open plains of the new sun-graced morning horizon.

"Come my love. ' _Boldness be my friend._ '" With a big grin on his pleasant face, King Friedrich quotes Shakespeare's rousing ' _Cymbeline'_ tale of an ancient king of Britain.

But it was tough to quote Shakespeare when your wife was giving you dagger eyes as she begrudgingly mounts her own flying horse.

"' _Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven_.'" _(Henry IV Act II)_ But savvy Arianna responds with another of the famed Bard's phrases as she spurs her flying horse Snaedis to fly forward to follow Anna on Sven.

"' _The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool._ '" ( _As you Like it Act V)_ King Friedrich murmurs to himself the line from the Shakespeare play best suited to his current sheepishness. Friedrich yet again marvels at how his wife still impressed him as being the most beautiful and clever and good and perfect a woman he ever had the privilege to meet.

' _Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly at your service. I would not wish any companion in the world but you.'_ (The Tempest Act 3)

King Friedrich silently repeats this unspoken, affectionate quote in his heart that still and forever would abide by his Queen. Friedrich of Corona knew he needed his Arianna for his very next breath in every day he had left of his life with her here on earth and even into the hereafter as they take off to southern skies.

* * *

Meanwhile, inside Egeskov Castle's second floor of the residences of the Princes of Southern Isles, some strange visitors had been making an unexpected appearances at this early morning hours as well.

"Do you know how to knock, Pascal? My twigs are a little full. Heheheh. I bet someone will open the door this time!" With a tray full of baked desserts and the bravely held pot of hot coffee that the snowman was carefully carrying, Olaf had accompanied speedy Pascal the chameleon up the stairs as fast as his stout little snow shoe feets could take him.

Rapunzel and Elsa had accompanied Emma and Frederika to bring the men some breakfast coffee and cakes to the throne room, leaving Olaf and Pascal behind for the cleanup. The industrious lizard and eager snowperson took it upon themselves to do the same for some of the nice princesses they had met earlier and rally them to join their excursion to the trial, as pretty and lively Princess Frederika instructed to Olaf before she departed.

Although, between Olaf's clumsiness and greedy tummy, not too many of the cook's yummy Danish confections all coated with sugary icing and stuffed with tasty fruit fillings made it up to the second floor suites. At least, not without that big single-toothed bite sunken into them when Olaf couldn't resist trying each flavor.

 _ **Knock. Knock. Knock**_.

The five inch long reptile uses his powerful tail to wallop the second floor door resoundingly.

After a few seconds of Olaf standing there at the door's entrance with a silly expanding grin with each passing second, Pascal decides to peek into the room.

Thus far, the sidekicks had come up with only empty room after empty room, feeling rather deflated in their helpful mission.

"Where is everybody?" Olaf stuffs another Kringle going to his hungry mouth. "There won't be many sweets left at this rate. Hee hee." With a raspberry jam covered mouth, Olaf poses the frustrated question to his reptilian companion.

Finally the next room offers Pascal's stiffened tale rapping a reply as the door swings open quite unexpectedly to the pair of surprised sidekicks.

"Olaf? What brings you to my door, this fine morning? What is it, mon ami?" As she opens her own suite's door at this early 6 AM morning hour, humming a French love song's etude, Princess Marguerite of Orleans aims a wispy, pleasant smile on her lovely face down at Olaf, despite the almost total lack of sleep last night.

The blonde Frenchwoman had not been this happy in a long time, perhaps not since she had first wed her handsome Prince Ivers and had high expectations for their life together be idyllic.

Now again, the emotional woman had hopes that she and the only man she had ever loved could start over again—this time without those secrets hanging a shadow over the relationship anymore.

No, Marguerite would accept his past errors and embrace that sweet boy child as the Lord Jesus would wish her to, rather than blame Ivers for the mistake of a single night's indiscretion.

Her ladies maid Daphne had become such a good and constant friend to the shy, inward Princess, that Marguerite would not abandon her companion either. That merciful forgiveness healed Marguerite's broken heart to find the joy of love again.

"P-win-shesh Fur-druk-wa onts chu in da sharone droom, preesh." With his mouth stuffed full, Olaf makes a mess of the spoken language as the wide-eyed French beauty cocks her head.

" _Pardone_?" When she fails to decipher a single word, Marguerite kneels down to the little snowman's level to hear him better. But Olaf's second try was even worse, with his smacking lips crammed of sticky jams and jellies clamped together with the mulberry red raspberry tart he had been chewing on.

"Olaf, you must repeat yourself, _mon chere_." As Marguerite ushers Olaf and Pascal into her bedroom, she was literally dancing about to finish getting herself dressed whilst humming a dreamy love song.

" _L'amour …_ _chéri d'amour…_ _Je t'aime_ _à la folie_." (My love…my sweetheart…I love you madly. _)_ Half dressed and humming melodically, Princess Marguerite begins to waltz in her stocking-ed feet with Olaf as her dance partner, spinning him around until the red jelly mouthed snowman was quite dizzy.

"Good morning, Princess Marguerite. Oh, Olaf, you're here, too." Daphne, as Marguerite's ladies maid, was just coming in at this 6:30 AM morn to set to work preparing for the day's ablutions and choose clothing for her mistress. The plump little maid was quite unaware that the Frenchwoman had already been wide-awake most of the night, too excited to greet the world today to sleep any further, as her loving husband instructed her to in his absence.

"Bonjour, Daphne. You're looking well. How is Lukas this lovely morning? Why doesn't he join us for breakfast? It appears our amicable snowfriend delivers croissants as well as dances." The blissfully happy golden blonde lets a besotted eyed Olaf drop from her dancing grip. His smiling silly head was spinning as his branchy arms were still reaching out to the gorgeous beauty for her feminine attentions as dance partner.

"Lukas? Oh, he's fine… that is, he's…out of sight…I mean…Lukas is still sleeping upstairs, m'lady." The chubby little maidservant couldn't help herself from curtsying at the end as she nervously stumbles over her words.

Daphne was yet in disbelief that her deep, dark, hidden secret had been revealed to the two most pivotal players in the whole mess – and all seemed to be at peace.

 _Praise be to the Lord of forgiveness!_

"Well, when he is awake, please invite the boy to dine with us for luncheon. Hopefully Ivers— ahem, the Lieutenant Admiral– will be free from this odd, unexpected jury duty by then." Marguerite was glad to have plainly sensed that her reconciled husband was none too eager to leave her bedside – for the first time in years – to be called to serve by that despicable Count Rügen as the deciding juror on some early morning dilemma that must be attended to for the kingdom's sake.

"Yes, m'lady. Thank you." With a genuine smile on her pudgy features, Daphne was grateful in so many ways for the benevolent attitude of her generous employer who had a bigger heart than any she'd ever known. "God bless you."

As she helps the tall blonde fix her scattered hair into a stylish chignon bun, Daphne's plump little hand squeezes Marguerite's long fingered one that reached up with a hairpin from her mirror dresser where she was primly sitting.

Marguerite takes Daphne's words to heart as the womens' eyes lock in the mirror reflection that both were gazing upon.

 _ **POPP!**_

"Remind me to never eat raspberry jelly tarts again on a dry mouth! It sticks like glue! But tasty glue. Okay. Let's start again. Good morning. My name is Olaf, and I like warm – oh, we already did that! Silly me! Raspberries tickle…" With a dismissive wave of hands at his own funny antics, the charming snowman chuckles at himself before getting around to stating his real purpose for coming upstairs.

"Oh, yeah! Princess Frederika wants all of you to come down to the throne room, please." The snow creature politely smiles his conveyance of the message up to the Princess of Orleans in her ladies maid as he sways back and forth.

"Frederika asked for all of us? This must be serious." Marguerite, pauses as she puts on a fresh coat of her fuchsia lipstick and the pearl set of earrings she retrieved from her jewel box. She gazes fondly down at the pieces of the broken, handmade rosary crucifix that her Father had purchased for her from a gypsy street vendor woman all those years ago as they often strolled to pray at the Notre Dame Cathedral after her mother died. That crucifix meant the world to her then, and had grown even more precious now that it also had a big role in saving her marriage.

"Oh, it is! Detrimentally for those _homem bonitos! (gorgeous men)_! There you are, friend Olaf, min querido (my dear)! Ola, Marguerite." Princess Gloria Lujza throws open the door boldly and breathlessly from rushing down the hall with Pascal upon her shoulder.

"Pascal has rounded up the rest of us to go down to the throne room where that faux court trial for those poor men we saved from the dungeon is taking place! It must not be going well for them, since they have gotten caught." Pleasant Princess Elisabeth of Flanders also enters the scene right behind Lujza.

Pascal, though his own gestured sign language brand of communicative genius, had conveyed to these two princesses the dire need for their presence in the throne room far quicker than Olaf's jelly stuck mouth had expressed actual words.

This pair of plucky princesses had not wasted a moment. Between Lujza and Elizabeth, the two of them had soon turned into five, with Hermine, Adelaide and Amalia already somewhat involved. When light-sleeper Princess Isabella overheard the commotion in the early morning hall, the friendly socialite never turned away from a gathering of any kind when invited.

Now, as for the sullen Princess Antonia of Spain…

The suspicious beauty neither was involved in any prior covert operation to be concerned nor have the compassion to care about some strangers being served proper justice or not.

But what she did possess was an ulterior motive for attending the trial. Antoinetta had also been awake and on her own _most_ of this eventful night.

 _Perhaps I have a vested interest in being a spectator at these proceedings. If just to see him squirm…_ The hot-tempered Spaniard flexes her delicate, raw fisted knuckles with a pained caress to them.

"Come on, ladies! There's a trio of _lindo deserdados príncipes_ (gorgeous disinherited princes) on trial down there with all of our own handsome husbands in the role of judge and jury. The show will be worse than waking us up this early on a festive party day!" With enthusiasm for men in thrilling dramatic action, Princess Gloria Lujza of Portugal had a zest for life. She was openly salivating at the thought of rubbernecking the face-off between the royal Southern Isle Princes and these mysterious disowned fugitive invaders, all in the cause of seeing justice served.

If Princess Frederika requested the princesses as an ensemble to show support for their husbands, or make some difference towards their benevolent verdict for mercy, these ladies of the court would go the distance.

Through some degree of promise that each of the Southern Isles Princes recently exhibited to their mates, these eight princesses would join the eldest two to stand behind their husbands, if only to give each man's cold heart a fair, noble and open-minded conscience.

One after another, the Princesses meet in the hall as they bid each other and Olaf a quick, awkward 'good morning' – after a few, uncomfortably received ' _I love warm hugs'_ greetings – to tromp down to fill the Egeskov Castle's throne room as audience in the surrounding balcony.

"Olaf? What is it?" Princess Amalia had lagged behind the others to give her baby Petunia an extra kiss and hug of the retrieved pony plush toy safe in her bed while her mommy and daddy were gone. The young mother was glad that helpful Daphne promised to help round up several of the other ladies' maids to watch over the still sleeping children of each of their mistresses early on this busy morn.

"Hold on to that thought… Picking up something… Ooh! That tingles! Hee hee. I like my new rock-hard, cold core compass! I just have to check the readings out." The giggling snowman, after peering at the naval instrument implemented in his pulled apart gut between butt and midsection, salutes a departing Pascal as the lizard disappears down the staircase on Princess Elisabeth's shoulder.

Solitary Olaf waddles in the opposite direction down the second floor hall towards the back servants' stairwell. There he thought he spotted an icy flash of something purely platinum swing by the corner of his eyes.

Olaf quickly scrambles down the hall beneath his personal snow flurry after that sparkling vision of glitter, his compass core definitely pointing him in that direction.

But there was a third-party watching Olaf's trailing of that mysterious figure that had dashed up the stairs.

A third party with a discernment for all brilliants that sparkled in such genuine enchanted attraction.

"What are you doing up and dressed so early in the morning, _bol'shaya Sestra_ (big sister)?" The younger Russian Princess whispers as she sneaks up from behind and glomps her big sister Eugenia's shoulders where the Russian Princess was speaking out their suite's cracked open door.

"Here. You take Blysk for his morning walk, Maria." Eugenia, as bossy older sibling, orders her little sister to replace her in her care for her orange-caramel fuzzy-headed, drowsy-eyed Tsvetnaya Bolonka doggie that Eugenia hands over into Maria's unwilling arms.

"But I'm going back to bed. _YAWN!_ I'm not traipsing outside in the cold at this time in the morning! You take your silly doggie out at this 6:30 AM wake-up call." Complaining of the brisk daybreak, Eugenia's seventeen-year-old sister pulls her wraps around her bare shoulders, desiring to snuggle back into her warm bed again rather than babysit her big sister's little doggie's outdoor bathroom breaks.

" **MARIA.** Will I have to inform Father how you snuck out of the room to go romancing with a certain Danish Prince yesterday? Don't think I didn't notice you making those giggling goo-goo eyes swooning all over those foolish half-dead wildflowers Prince Ruddi picked from the garden for your hair, _mladshaya sestra_ (little sister)." Eugenia cattily threatens to expose her younger sister's disobedience to their currently snoring father, the Czar, sleeping in the other connected bedroom.

The highly critical elder Princess of Russia plucks the remainder of the wilted fuchsia bloom from Maria's brown bouncy ringlet waves in a sort of blackmail before her younger sister's eyes.

"Fine. I take your dumb pooch out to poop. But this is the last time you push me around, Eugenia!" Acting like the petulant teenager she was, Maria grumbles as she quickly pulls on her frock and shawl and grabs Blysk the dog's still snoozing, long furred body to cart the despised creature down Egeskov's corridor to take him outside.

"Sure it is, Maria." The more intelligent, cloyingly clever young woman was already perfectly dressed and neatly hairstyled, complete with her sophisticated genuine silver and gold, high-class ostentatious jewelry that she would constantly deck herself out in. Eugenia was proud to be the elder Princess of her kingdom of Russia and flaunt it before everyone she met abroad.

With her sister scurrying down Egeskov's long staircase, Princess Eugenia uncharacteristically dashes through the hall in the opposite direction in chase of that perplexing, animated little snowman that intrigued her completely.

* * *

As stealthy as a cat on the ice, Elsa had made her way through the servant's side staircase. She had stopped by her own and Daphne's shared attic quarters to quickly gather her freshly washed and pressed regal purple and black gold trimmed outfit she had carefully wrapped in papers.

Elsa then rushes past with her parcel into the collection of old cobwebby discarded furniture as she hurries into Hans' secret childhood cove, with her head held high this time.

The Queen of Arendelle was at first disturbed at this discovery of the enshrinement to herself – or more the fantasy girl a young boy's dream praised her to be. But coming here a second time in the light of morning made Elsa feel more objectively honored and definitely adored with all the sculptures, portraits and charcoals depicting herself in all stages of her life, rather than merely uncomfortable.

Elsa saw herself through the eyes of young Hans Westergaard's lonely imagination and extrapolation from that single photographed naval news article from decades back.

Surrounded by the epiphany of the devotion that went into all the artwork and portraits of herself, and strangely feeling safe in this quiet nest's embrace, a flattered Elsa blushes. As the slender beauty quickly shimmies her shapely elegant body to strip down to her undergarments, her gaze peruses all the various self-portraits that were funny, often feature exaggerated caricatures that Hans had drawn of himself. The amusing artwork had been strewn across the desk when the curious Arendelle Queen had pried into the drawer and unearthed earlier.

All in all, Elsa was impressed by the hours of detailed work and effort the exiled outcast boy must have put into each piece his talented hands crafted.

Despite her haste and urgency, Elsa couldn't help but girlishly giggle down at one particular self-depreciating depiction with bright red hair, accentuated freckles and a long, curved upward pointing nose. She fondly pets at it with her artistic finger's long strokes, imagining herself doing the same to the real man someday.

Nestled away from the world in this quiet, secluded, private environment, the Ice Queen recalled her cool tipped fingers' total ease when it came to touching Hans Westergaard, bare skin to bare skin.

 _Why not?_ If Anna had forgiven Hans to a degree enough to be the driving force to come all this distance in search of him, as Rapunzel had informed her, Elsa felt an encouraging glimmer of hope that the peppery little sister she adored may one day accept Elsa's budding relationship with Hans, too.

Elsa of Arendelle herself had come to grips with the fact that she was in love with Hans Westergaard after their thrilling adventure in Norway had reunited the incredible pair. And she was almost as certain that he felt something of the emotion for her, the way he had been so gallantly kind and selflessly noble towards her on their epic journey of discovery.

While smoothing her hair into her full braid, her crystal clear, sparkling eyes search about the loft's hidden rafters at the streaming in daylight, another landscape portrait clearly showed a different kind of love's yearning from the lonely young boy.

It was one particular piece in this boyish shrine full dreams and poetry intermingled with literary hopes all listed and categorized to drilled perfection, as Elsa's one free hand was leafing through the large page sketches and watercolor paintings.

One watercolor above all the rest in the sketchbook, that Elsa had only given moderate notice to before, had clearly been indulged by young Hans' keen attention to detail and aptitude in illustrated artwork, especially for the year dated in the far corner as '1831.' That was when Prince Hans was just five years of age and had been newly replanted from his birthplace of Egeskov to the Fattigskole convent charity school in Odense.

"Poor lonely boy… **my** Hans… I promise I won't let you be this lonesome ever again." Elsa murmurs to herself as she examines the detailed artwork, full of longing and sympathized sadness plainly expressed through the artist's brush.

"Wow. JustHans drew all of these? He should've been an artist. But he's a good seaman and swordsman and public speaker, too. Wow… I think he likes you a lot." Olaf's awestruck voice disturbs Elsa's quiet train of thought as she was just finishing up her gathering of a certain missive among Hans' exemplary report cards, painted sketches, and poetry and copybook pages tucked into this makeshift old desk.

"Olaf?! How are you here?!" Elsa's racing mind and pounding heart freezes in her chest when she is startled by Olaf's abrupt appearance over the railing of the attic loft.

"You made me out of your sisterly love for Anna. She always chased you around when you guys were little. And my PSF ( _personal snow flurry_ ) up here always gives me a heads up when it senses how close you are. And since I recently embedded in here this handy little fella that JustHans taught me to use, it helps me know what direction you're in pretty quick." Olaf pats his 'ice hard abs' whereabouts the nautical compass was located. "So don't you worry! Just like I promised your Papa before we left, I'll always be as close by as your love for Anna and hers for you." Closing his bright eyes, sweet, simple Olaf happily grins up to his dear girl.

"Thank you for reminding me of that, Olaf. I needed Anna's courage just now. I have to be strong, and bold, and daring… For Hans." After icy levitating Olaf over the desktop ledge of Hans' attic loft desk she was sitting at, Elsa fiercely hugs her snowfriend with all the warmth of love bolstering her from so many angles of her permanently unfrozen heart.

Elsa steels herself for what she must now do for the Danish Prince both she and Olaf had become so terribly fond of.

"JustH ans is a good guy now, Elsa. He's really smart and mighty brave, and sings super good, too! Now I see he even draws well. I like having him around. I think he needs a better home. This room is way too small and dark for such a tall guy! Why don't we bring him to our home? There're lots of nice, bright, big rooms up in Arendelle Castle." The silly snowman speaks as if Hans was a lost puppy in need of shelter. But there was beneficent wisdom beyond even his own knowledge of how true his words were.

Olaf idly chatters on while Elsa uses her ice magic to drive some thumbtacks that had been sitting in a broken teacup on the makeshift desk to affix Hans' two decades old drawing she removed from the sketchbook onto a wooden board she had employed a mystically ice created saw to slice to size in a wink.

"Oh, Olaf… I'm going to try very hard to do just that." With an inward chuckle at the simplicity that expressed her every ideal, Elsa pats Olaf's frosty smiling cheek affectionately.

The innocent twinkle in his charcoal black eyes reflected back the Ice Queen's caring sentiment for this last, but not least, disinherited and unwanted Westergaard child who had impacted all their lives.

It was Prince Hans who was able to unlock all of the closed doors in her life to give Elsa of Arendelle the once unattainable dream of longing for love like any other girl.

 _I'm not just any other girl. I'm Elsa of Arendelle, the Ice Queen._

The Queen of Ice who had reconciled with her fears to realize, at last, that taking firm hold of love was something within the powerful beauty's own capable hands.

An amazing, marvelous, one-chance-in-a-lifetime love she would desperately fight to claim as her own.

 _I've come all this way. And I'm not going home empty handed, now that I've found him again._

"We have to vindicate him in this ridiculous trial first. There's only one person who could help us now. Come on, Olaf. From here on, we take the gloves off."

With a toss of her artfully loosed braid over her shoulder, and her pale blue diamond decorated gloves tucked purposefully up into her sleeves, Elsa uses the symbolism of her old sheltered, frightened past being overcome by her dazzling new determination and courage to face the future unfettered.

With one more silent prayer on her lips, in a shimmering flash of her exotic blue eyes, Elsie the maid had transformed from the black and white demure Victorian service uniform into Queen Elsa of Arendelle's lovely, regal and stately long purple violet velveteen skirt and bejeweled, gold venise lace trimmed jacket.

 _No more concealing…I'm free to let the fear go, and finally_ _ **feel**_ _what it's like to be me…_

* * *

Folding back the quickly reread letter into its yellowed with age envelope and stashing it into the jacket lining over her heaving bosom, queenly dressed Elsa moves back from the secret loft cove into the attic's rear storage room.

Olaf was at her heels carrying the 12 x 10 inch sketchbook drawing that Elsa had specifically tacked to a board.

With a final quick check in the turned over, cheval mirror to adjust her purple velveteen jacket and smooth her platinum tresses, Elsa cuts through the dusty attic and back to the shared servant's bedroom.

"Miss Elsie? Am I dreaming that's you? You look beautiful in that dress!" Rubbing the sleepers from his eyes, Lukas was a smooth-talking charmer, even upon first light awakening.

The scruffy brown haired little boy sits up on his bed when Olaf – who knew nothing about being clandestine – tripped over the child's lace-up shoes at the base of the bed with a loud clatter. The snowman makes a squealing noise when he nearly falls, so as Elsa hurriedly must create some ice magic to steady her step-and-fetchit, clumsy snowfriend.

"Oh, Lukas. We didn't mean to wake you. Good morning." Elsa tries to smile at the child in between neatly folding the maid's outfit that she had borrowed from Daphne and scribbling a 'thank you' note she lays atop the black and white dress on the bed to her dear friend. The thoughtful young woman must the generous servant her give proper appreciation, should Elsa have to leave Egeskov in a hurry without getting the chance to say goodbye in person.

"Good morning, Miss Elsie. Are you going somewhere? Here, let me help you carry your bags downstairs. That's a really nice drawing of this castle you have there, Olaf." The observant, bright blue eyed boy takes a look at the rectangular sketchbook where Olaf's branchy arms were carrying the artwork.

"I know! You watch your step down the stairs with that, Olaf, and I'll carry Miss Elsie"s luggage." Taking the gentlemanly initiative when he sees Elsa's satchel full of feminine toiletries, Lukas offers helpfully, acting like the kindhearted respectful boy his Mama raised him to be.

"Thank you, Lukas." Elsa was in too much of a hurry to argue further. So she leads her growing little entourage down the stairs to divert back down into the second floor hallway.

Looking both ways up and down the corridor before entering it, Elsa could've sworn that she sensed a presence in the empty hall when she first stepped into it, before she had now transformed into her Queen of Arendelle garb.

But she hadn't the time to pause for long to ponder the idea. Traversing the hallway with all swiftness, with a deep inhaled breath, Elsa raises her elegant pale hand to the wide double doors at the long hall's end.

 _ **Knock. Knock. Knock.**_

The platinum blonde quietly raps thrice on the thick wooden door, her shivering mind and body stabilizing as much as possible with the memory of being the one shut-in on the other side of the door, waiting for that daily knock and sweet plea from her sister as the highlight in her lonely day of training and study.

Elsa recalls how special she'd felt whenever Anna's adorable voice called through the door erected between them, still begging to be her best friend/sister when bold Anna would so many times knock on her closed door to come out and play in their misspent youth. Broken-hearted young Elsa had secretly wished for the day when she would be in control of her powers enough to open the door and let her sister in.

But it wasn't that sweet little girl on the other side of the door whom Elsa of Arendelle was steeling her frayed nerves to open up and speak with today.

 _ **Cough. Cough.**_

"Enter." The weakened cough was followed by a deep throated, masculine single word that sends chills up Elsa's already shivering spine. Subconsciously tugging on her gloves, Elsa's panicked blue eyes find a minutiae of solace in Olaf's encouraging nodding grin as she looks down to the snowman and Lukas' friendly thumbs up at her tall, regal form.

Closing her startled expressive eyes with a venturesome courageous smile overtaking alarm on her poised lips, the Queen of Arendelle turns open the lion's head doorknob of the master bedroom suite of the King of the Southern Isles.

Elsa's trembling gloved hands squeeze together tightly, wringing themselves until the vision of handsome Prince Hans' breathtaking genuine smile in her mind's eye gives her that extra undaunted motivation to keep going.

"Who dares disturb the King?"

Elsa's eyes adjust from the hall's dim light into the utterly devoid of light bedroom she is plunged into as she compels herself to enter. The doors quickly close behind her as Olaf and Lukas, scurry to the side, not wishing to be noticed.

"What time is it? Who in blazes are you, girl? I do not take strange visitors in my bedroom, no matter how fine figured or well-dressed they come!" Intimidating King Herbert of the Southern Isles gives off the demeanor of cool annoyance as he strains to look up from his bed, squinting his eyes through the substantial darkness of his large King size canopied four poster bed. He struggles to glimpse into what little light there was peeking through the thickly drawn curtains at the window to see his visitor.

Being an experienced man at his seventy years of age, despite his failing sight, King Herbert at least was aware that a female in all of her stately glory enter his bedroom.

 _And an extremely shapely, regal one at that._

Elsa had the drooling King's full attention entirely as she carefully moves further into the King of Denmark's bedchamber.

With a quick check of the pocket watch her own Papa has given her on her 16th birthday that held the inscription: 'To My dearest Snow Angel', Elsa responds to the hoarse voice Danish monarch's first query.

"It is a quarter hour to seven in the morning, your Majesty." The primly dressed blonde beauty adjusts her pale blue gloves under his scrutiny self-consciously as she draws nearer to his bedside.

"A quarter hour to—? _cough cough_ — Is that you…Elsie?" The old curmudgeon's gruff voice softens at the memory of the demure dainty maid he preferred more than another debutante upstart displaying her wares to impress him. King Herbert rubs at his full gray beard in consternation as he pulls himself awake fully now.

His piercing blue eyes show some recognition of the high feminine strains of the young maid who had befriended the royal ruler of Denmark a day or two ago when he had medical issues.

The newly arrived young maid had sat by him and covertly helped the King back into his bed without alerting any others, as he requested. She had spoken to him in a straightforward, calming way he had not been comfortable enough to feel for anyone – particularly of her gender - in a long time.

"Yes, your Majesty. I apologize for disturbing you so early this morning, but I desperately need your help—the kind of help that only you can provide. Oh, do pardon me. May I be the first to offer you solicitations for a Happy Birthday, King Herbert." As she signals for Olaf and Lucas to sit down and be quiet upon a nearby setee against the wall, Elsa speaks gently and even toned. She was doing her best to contain her own fears and nerves in addressing this important, intimidating European Royal.

"That does sound – _cough cough_ – rather serious _– cough cough_ – young lady." Intrigued, impressed, and interested in this enigmatic creature simultaneously, for the first time in a long time, King Herbert, with a rare smile, starts to sit up on the monstrous bed. His constricted lungs cause the elderly man to suddenly cough and choke violently with uncontrollable spasms.

Elsa rushes over to place a cool calm hand to King Herbert's likewise cold, gasping for breath convulsing cheek to calm him. Picking up her thoughts, Olaf and Lukas rush to the window to open it for some fresh air.

Something about the new morning's summer breeze and the quick close contact with the beauteous Queen of Ice was able to quell the King's relentless cough for a few moments. Elsa's magical smile down at him allows Herbert to see clearly into the dawn's early light streaming through the open window as the morning sun's clarity and rays of light glisten through her icy blue eyes straight into his stony heart.

"Why, Elsie. What has happened to my little maid? You're dressed in stately clothing as if you were a –" The intelligent older man looks up into his tender nurse's lovely, sympathetic face as he straightens his back up against the headboard. King Herbert's eyes take in, close-up, Elsa's delicate allure in the impressive outfit that only a woman of royal breeding generally sported.

 _And rarely so well_ , the once dashing figure's roving eyes give approval.

"– Queen Elsa of Arendelle, at your service, your Majesty. Please forgive my earlier pretense, posing as your maid. But there was someone I wished to locate without causing undue uproar in your fine kingdom, nor an international incident." With a deeply reverent curtsy, Elsa bows to the wide-eyed, elderly King with all the graciousness she had been taught by her Papa and Mama and minister Kai to show humility before other members of royalty.

 _ **Cough. Cough. Cough. Cough. Choke. Choke.**_

"Indeed. Even being bedridden these past two years, I have heard tales about you." Stunned nearly speechless, suspicious King Herbert shrinks involuntarily away from this trickery and infiltrated subterfuge of his nation by this mysterious leader of a foreign power, however lovely she may be. But the cold mirror sliver that still pierced in his chest was clouding King Herbert's heart with the chill of wanton ambition and defiant confrontation in order to dominate, back with a vengeance, as the affronted King sits back to his canopy's decorated gold leaf.

At first instantly angered, King Herbert was quite astounded by this highly unexpected early morning revelation. But this ' _Queen Elsa'_ had already made too good a first impression as 'Elsie the maid' upon the Danish King not to at least give his young counterpart ruler of Norway a congenial hearing, after her contrite apology.

"Which of my sons, pray tell, have you become acquainted and have business with, Queen Elsa? Though I do not understand what dealings would personally have you here, as I recall that Kaleb had informed me of there being a fracas altercation involving your Coronation and a former member of my household being a… shall we say, disruptive irritant… two years ago. Has that worthless wastrel's punishment not been severe enough to your satisfaction, your Majesty? I had not been able to oversee the affair myself, due to this damnable, vile illness. But my older sons assured me the matter was well taken care of, to the harshest extent of our Danish law." Herbert's stoic, dismissive, uninviting gaze he usually wore to the world is restored, as he once again withdraws into himself and retreats into the coldness of his frozen, closed heart again.

The King does his utmost to be as dignified as the bedridden monarch could manage, now on tense terms with this woman in opposition.

"It is not any business dealing with your sons I have come to discuss, King Herbert." Taking a deep breath, Elsa employs all the acumen of elocution and poised dignity that her father had trained her to serve as the Royal monarch of Arendelle, someday in his place.

"It is the subject of equitable justice and mercy, for the sake of one of your praiseworthy sons. Please, I have come to request your concerned intervention in a case of genuine compassion in a pardon for his principled and admirable, righteous actions." Elsa begins her entreaty with her attractive head held high to meet the older man's questioning eyes. She swallows here, knowing the name next mentioned may stir some ill will feelings.

But say it she must.

"Your youngest son, Prince Hans, is on trial downstairs right now, nobly defending an innocent man for an honest mistake, entirely blown out of proportion. Over the past few weeks of our reaquaintance, I have come to trust in his judgment and decency implicitly. My kingdom has already forgiven your son for all the wrongs he had misguidedly committed in the past which he has expressed genuine and great repentance for. As the God-fearing woman I have been raised to be, I have come to realize that Prince Hans has the true heart of a changed man. He has courageously saved my life, my sister's, and that of my parents, who have been miraculously returned to our grateful homeland only with Hans' able, selfless service, at valiant risk of his own life, time and time again. I and so many others in my nation owe your son, Prince Hans much, in addition to admiration and gratitude of our hearts to him." Once too shy to speak to a stranger, Elsa pauses in her in depth explanation of her presence here and her own soulful pardon of his youngest son.

"In that vain, with my Father, King Agdar's consent, I have come to bestow honors and commendations upon Prince Hans Westergaard for his heroic deeds for the sake of delivering my homeland, Norway, from a terrible menace. I have welcomed him into my Navy, and more than that…indeed, my intent in coming to Egeskov is more concerning a matter of the heart… So, now, please, I require the munificent help that only you can give me now to exonerate Prince Hans and his companions from this unjust trial." With a hand dramatically placed over her own left breast, pouring out the plea of her pounding heart, Elsa sincerely meets King Herbert's cold gaze with a warm, hopeful one of her own.

But his stagnant, forbidding countenance does not bend nor budge even at her heart-rendered speech, chilling Elsa's optimistic smile into a trembling lipped frown.

"What does a fickle heart have to anything to do with justice in this world, young woman?" King Herbert's steely blue eyes slit with hostile incredulity at this dangerous female he now saw as an opponent on the international stage, rather than the puppet he believed she could be for one of his sons to marry and rule her prosperous, wealthy kingdom.

"I have found the heart a weakling human emotion more than a strength in this life, that only a fool claims as being essential. The same stands for mercy that is begged for by the meager and pitiable. As for justice, the strong will be the decider of what is righteous." Seeing reality distorted through that evil magic mirror piece driven within him, King Herbert recoils up on his high horse. His inhospitable, doubtful heart was by now chilled to the core with the Accuser's rebellion as the shard of that mystical mirror that reflected only the evil in this world once again tips its pendulum towards the darker side of his thoughts.

Elsa gasps as King Herbert coldly states his harsh opinion, obviously dismissing this annoying creature from his callous sight with an unsympathetic mind.

"And as for my offspring…today, no doubt, my disingenuous sons will wish me a 'Happy birthday, with many more to come'. But I am not too decrepit in mind yet to know that each and every one of them truly wish me dead already, so they can inherit my kingdom, divide up my lands, and fight over who gets to finally wear my Crown. There is no heart, no mercy, and little justice when it comes to absolute primogeniture succession. The weak will die out and the strong will survive. It's the natural law of the survival of the fittest."

Something of the bitter cold inside the vacant place of his distrustful heart that speaks these coldblooded sentences was aggravated by her imprudent challenging persistence. King Herbert turns his pompous, straight Roman nose up to the air and away from Elsa, proud of his Danish heritage as a cruel, cold conqueror, just as all of his ancestors for countless centuries before him built his nation to be the victors.

Elsa's eyes flicker with the dread of his unbidden, underlying anger at life as the timid girl shivers so inwardly, the Ice Queen feared she may lose control of herself against his chilled frostiness. Elsa's undeniable urge to cower and dash away to run to the hills begins to fill her quavering heart all over again…

 _No, Elsa. No more running._ _Hans needs you to take a stand and be his Queen today. I will never allow him be lonely again. I…love him too much to let him go..._

Her gorgeous blue eyes glisten with the acknowledged love and the vowed resolve she promised before all that she held holy to never lose sight of again.

"I beg to differ with you there, and on so many things, Sir. And, I believe, so would **she**." Elsa's eyes pointedly raise up to the painting directly across from King Herbert's bed that depicted his long-passed, benevolent looking Queen Louise. With a self-assured voice and straight, upright posture, Elsa motions for Lukas and Olaf to bring over Hans' sketchbook watercolor painting.

In his resentful antagonism of this trifling little girl—unmerited Royal Queen merely due to her strange recluse father's untimely death—who dared to challenge his decree, a dismissive King Herbert glosses over the commoner child and snow creature in his bedroom with imperial superiority.

He had been doing his best to give this enigmatic Queen Elsa of the North country the cold shoulder once she started speaking foolishness of hearts and justice and empathy for any of his clawing and avaricious, despicable sons. But he could not ignore her for long when the graceful Monarch of Norway places the hardboard backed page upon his lap, along with an old, yellowed envelope with an address written upon it the silently shunning old man could barely read, for it was in a foreign language.

"We all have made mistakes. And we all can, through the Grace of God alone, have the blessed opportunity to correct our past wrongs with a true heart filled with the Lord's mercy and forbearance and belief that, through Love, He will set us free from the darkness of fear and anger and doubt that confines us to the past." A devout believer in His everlasting Word, liberated Queen Elsa states the earnest morals she herself had taken to heart not long after she had been redeemed of her own rebellious ordeal.

"' _Ours is a forgiving God of justice and righteousness who never turns His back on any of His children._ ' It took me a long time to understand that myself, with what I, at first, believed was a curse—my special abilities. But through the miracle of my heart being taught that it is **love** that thaws a frozen heart, by someone dear who loved me unconditionally, with the love of the Lord in her heart for me, I was blessed to find my way home to the warmth. I am just as certain now that I have more than glimpsed in your penitent son, Prince Hans, a warm and noble heart, that beats as one with mine. So I will welcome him into my kingdom as my hero, and the other half of my heart, no matter what it takes, nor what you judge of him here."

With her bold declaration of love in a confident air she never realized she could project to another human being, never mind the Danish King she was raised to recognize was her nation's challenger, as well as her love's cold-hearted, cruel Father, Elsa uses her cryokinetic ice magic to fling open the deep crimson curtains from the window's glowing radiance to let the morning sun come rushing in.

"Come, boys." Before his astonished eyes, a poised and powerful Queen Elsa of Arendelle magically transforms from her purple regal gown into her slinky pale blue ice dress as she moves to leave the King's chamber. With a determined, yet hopeful smile at King Herbert, Elsa departs from the room out through the balcony patio door she mystically frost hurls open. Her innate ice was at the ready to take herself, Olaf and Lukas out into the dawning morn and away from this vindictive King's bedchamber.

"' _I pray that out of the riches of His glory, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit to heal your heart's inner being._ '" (Ephesians 3:16)

With a compassionate glint in her crystalline blue eyes back at the pathetic older man who stubbornly refused to know God's mercy, for himself or his children, the Ice Queen dramatically leaves her honest words, hopeful actions and heartfelt sentiment dangle in the once still cool air of the no longer darkened bedroom.

King Herbert of the Southern Isles stares in confounded wonder of the bold young woman who had dared as none had in a very long time to welcome streams of warming sunlight to pierce through with her Biblically profound entreaty and her own dazzling, beautiful shine.

In total curiosity as to this intriguing icy creature, flabbergasted Herbert could not keep his stubborn gaze away, as he looks in absolute shock down at the vibrant sketchpad illustration Queen Elsa had left on his lap.

It was a stunning view of his own Egeskov Renaissance Castle in all its monks brick, multi-spired conicle towers, ornate fountains and topiary, trimmed maze garden and moat surrounded glory.

There were the dozen strapping young men of all ages and shades and sizes upon the castle's impressive front promenade entrance, either riding horses in the thatched roof Ladegården stables, walking through the beech or bamboo hedge mazes, reading books lazily stretched out on the lush fuchsia lawns, playing at archery or some sport in the hectares of pleasant, colorful fields.

And the King himself, their Father, was obviously depicted standing nobly wearing his crown in the midst of the pleasant, productive outdoors scene of the twelve sons he approved of.

Of course, it took a much deeper study of the intricate watercolor drawing to notice the small boy, forgotten in the grey, dull shadows of a window of the higher floors of the castle, alone and desolate. A tearful faced, little red-headed boy was gazing at the fulfilling scene outside in an illustrated allegory of the exiled pariah outcast the tiny child was always meant to feel like.

But in the imagery painting, there appeared in the sunsetting clouds above Egeskov's highest tower, where the lonely boy was obscured, an artfully expressive figure of a woman amidst the clouds. The beautiful angelic lady with similar colored, curled titian hair, an impish smile, and eyes that could see into your very soul, if glimpsed long enough, could be seen hovering in the reddish-orange hues of the watercolor at sunset. The ethereal cloud angel's elegant hands were reaching out towards that weeping sad child, her see through arms extending over the entire castle's frontage and all those below within it.

It appeared, somehow, as if her lovely translucent face was delicately mouthing words that were written in such small letterings that Herbert's old wrinkled eyes almost couldn't make them out along the wispy clouds. But the rising morning sun to shine through the glass door and window Elsa left open before made it possible for him to read.

"' _That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.'_ Colossians 2:2-3."

King Herbert's jaw drops at the skill of the artistry, though still obviously childlike, and moreover the insightful, accomplished profundity for one so young as he recites aloud the Bible verse inscribed there in the watercolor's mists to no one, save the painting of his Queen on the bedroom wall he often spoke to.

Finally, with tremulous eyes, King Herbert looks back down to the poignant painting to find the boyish signature on the bottom as to name the artist, year drawn, and location painted, though inside, he already recognized his mistake of a mistake of a mistake.

 _Prince Hans Westergaard, 1831. Fattigskole Convent Charity School._

"Oh, Louise… What have I wrought for your children…?"

The brilliant rays of the Creator's sun, refracted by frozen fractal glints of the perfectly crystalline verglas bridge the Ice Queen had erected in the King's window minutes ago, gleam a hallowed spotlight upon the old, yellowed with age missive a curious Herbert cautiously extracts from the envelope Elsa had ingeniously laid beside the painting on the King's bed.

As he reads, something a tender-hearted woman transcribed there, over two and a half decades ago, seems to start to smolder a small sliver of the mirror shard that had been implanted in King Herbert's struck cold heart, more than half a century ago of frigid, ambitious cruelty…

That single, startling hot tear his long dead Queen Louise inspired begins to from in his eye and burn away at the mirror shard piercing King Herbert's frozen heart…

* * *

 _mon ami_ – my friend in French

 _mon chere –_ my dear in French

 _Bonjour – Good morning in French_

 _lindo deserdados príncipes_ \- gorgeous disinherited princes in Portugese

 _Søværnet –_ Royal Danish Navy

 _mladshaya sestra_ \- little sister in Russian

 _bol'shaya Sestra_ \- big sister in Russian

* * *

 _End of October greetings, Frozen friends!_

 _Wow! First we have some hijinks with the King & Queen of __Corona_ _, and then our head-over-heels-in-love Ice Queen Elsa takes control and goes on the rampage! She had to steel her courage to face the intimidating King of the Southern Isles, and teach him a thing or two about how to treat a Queen!_

 _I wonder what she has in mind in concern with one Mr. Hans Westergaard now…_

 _Please review! The climax to this story arc is coming soon for a November birthday to my most ardent fan and beloved big sister of a super Helsa lover!_

 _Thanks for reading and God bless!_

 _HarukaKou_

 _P.s. *0* BOO! Wasn't his mind-meld with Sven a cool Halloween-ish spooky surprise for our uber-talented Wind Whisperer/ Snow Prince Kristoff?_

 _^_^ Reindeers are better than people , after all! Heeheehee!_

 _Happy Halloween!_


	23. Chapter 23 - The Court of Miracles

_Happy Thanksgiving, Frozen friends! Buckle up for quite a ride...heeheehee_

 _We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 23**

 **"The Court of Miracles"**

Flynn Rider did not like doing as he was told.

Maybe it was the full half measure of gypsy blood that ran rampantly through his rebellious system, but Flynn never appreciated taking orders from anyone.

Nor did he enjoy being kicked out of a country, nevermind a ritzy, tall spired, up market castle.

Especially not by a bunch of spoiled brat princes who were sitting there pretty in their lofty seats of judgment against his railroaded Lillebror Hans and fellow Prussian patriot Aged P, not to mention that zoned-out Muscles.

 _Rich and powerful_ b _ig brothers don't intimidate me!_

To top it off, having Corona's sourpuss Captain of the Guard, Schmidt, lord over and gloat at his irksome, troubled nemesis 'former' thief, just added insult to injury.

Flynn had kept up a constant barrage of bitter complaints, sage advice and bravado concealed pleas until he finally convinced Captain Schmidt's hardhead to at least go back in to serve as his eyes and ears at that mock trial.

So, Corona's Captain left his best guard of all in charge of keeping an eye on the errant thief in his absence.

Namely, a singular palace horse named 'Maximus.'

"So… Max, old buddy. While I'm just standing here watching you snack on these premium vittles to get your strength up before our journey homeward bound begins and Job snazzies you up to tip-top shape again, what say you about letting these here undesirable bones take a first, and no doubt last, stroll around Egeskov Castle's plush gardens and luscious landscapes? If just to bid farewell to this extravagant heritage that I daresay could have been a part of, but never will be. Alas. Oh had I just been born on the proper side of the sheets..." His flippant amber eyes distant and trained upwards to the sky as if in a dreamy wistfulness, Eugene's wordy soliloquy in this forward section of the Ladegården stables only garners an ingratiated grunt from the dark, raised-brow Caribbean man and a mild cynical glance up from the skeptical horse in his immediate vicinity.

Though quiet Job keeps his own counsel to continue to curry Maximus' freshly cleaned wounds and scrubbed-of-caked-blood body, the jaded, large white steed wasn't so generous.

With a horsie gaffaw, Maximus had heard this type of shameless schmooze from Flynn Rider all before, ever since the intelligent horse had become a begrudging ally with the garrulous thief over the past several years of being thrown together.

With one eye out to Egeskov's famed fuchsia gardens and the noisy hedgerows filled with Snuggly Duckling boys enjoying the views under their anxious Corona guards watch while they wait, Maximus shrugs. The chief guard horse saw little harm there with everyone around to keep an eye on the slippery thief.

Sniggering along with the other horses around the stable's bend in earshot, with whom a bemused Maximus had made quick acquaintance with his credentials as Corona's equine dual Captain of the Guard, the Percheron had the horse sense to see right through Prince Eugene's wheedling pretense. The dubious horse looks up from his munching on Danish choice oats beside the snobbish purebreds proudly housed in this kingdom's auspicious stable.

With a startled double take whinny, he realized he had been given the slip by the sneaky criminal who had disappeared while Maximus had been laughing it up. He dutifully surveyed the Snuggly Duckling gang amusing themselves in the mazes and hedgerows of the extensive stable complex near Egeskov's courtyard.

Maximus exchanges a glance with a silently observant Job who mounts the suspicious horse. Though Job had no doubt of this outcome, Maximus did not expect to see the irascible Flynn already on a furtive, hasty path halfway back across the side drawbridge that had remained lowered between Egeskov main Castle and its stable complex.

"Neigh!" The large powerfully built Percheron shakes his head indignantly at the man's gall to have misused the officious steed's trust.

Maximus rampages through the Ladegården, kicking up Danish dust so that the reinvigorated horse catches up to Eugene in ten seconds flat.

"Whinny! Whinny!" Blocking Eugene's misbegotten path, Maximus puts up a mighty protest against the thieving man that the horse faults himself now for being too lenient with.

"Come on! Max! I swear I'm not heading back to that throne room I was so crudely ejected from." Eugene gives the nostrils flared horse a dissipated excuse. "I just thought it would be rude not to give my solicitations to a certain birthday boy up there. Whether he cares to hear it or not, it's about time someone had the guts to inform that old man that he's been tricked by a snake in his midst.

"That vicious vengeful snake in the grass, Rügen, and his vendetta against good ol' sideburns and the trumped up charges he's lowered against the whole gang. What'dya you say, Max? Job, Ol' buddy? Can you find it in your hearts to turn a blind eye to let me get up there for a few minutes for a worthy cause? I know it's what Rapunzel would want me to do." Using every bit of the power of persuasion he could muster on the righteous steed and Islander man, for good measure, he even threw in his sweet Princess wife's name to help convince both.

Flynn's cocky smile soon overtakes his penitent façade when a frustrated Maximus sighs in reluctant acquiescence and a silent Job takes off in the direction of the Corona guards to play subtle interference as Eugene's unspoken cover.

Closing one eye, stubborn Maximus turns his head the other way and sticks out his fore-hoof for a grudging handshake.

"You big softy." A smirking Eugene returns the handshake with a friendly jab to Maximus' tall shoulder.

"Whoa-oh!" But the former thief is surprised when the horse leans his muscular neck down to scoop up the flailing man. At full throttle, the muscular white Percheron was acclaimed for, Maximus carries Eugene the remainder of the way at breakneck speed across the high drawbridge and carefully around the moat surrounded Castle's rear east side.

Agile Maximus stops to a screeching halt as close to the monk's brick arcading wall of the castle as the big horse could manage.

With a throaty breath in and an animated gesture up of his flared muzzle, Maximus' eyes point upwards for a dizzied Eugene to begin to do one of the things the sleek sneak thief did best.

The one dexterous ability that had gotten Flynn Rider into so much trouble up into a tower once upon a time, had also got him into so much luck in love.

 ** _Climb._**

"You know Max, every now and then you're something special." With a sappy smile, Eugene remarks when the intuitive, always prepared guard horse produces a pair of climbing spikes from his pack attached to his saddle.

The skeptical eyed, clever horse knew, from their many adventures together, that Rapunzel's gung-ho fellow often required gear that Flynn Rider was rarely prescient enough to remember to bring.

Then his trademark smirk takes over once more as Eugene grabs hold of the pair of sharp climber tools from Maximus' proffered teeth.

"Now, Partner, we **are** in business! I just have to give a rough estimate guess which one of these – what kind of glazier's hell is this?! _T_ wo hundred or so windows?! –belongs to the majestic bedroom of the illustrious, impressive, _much reputed_ **King** of the Southern Isles…" Gazing upwards with Maximus, their mouths drop open, and Flynn lets the resentful laced question hang in midair with an overwhelmed whistle.

With a non-committal shrug, he sinks his first sharp spike into the 15th century oversized monk's brick and mortar of the Castle's exterior. Flynn pauses to look up to the daunting multiple-choice rows of windows with a grimace.

 ** _WHOOSH!_**

Then, abruptly, a cool rush of wind blows open from the inside of one of the second floor's ornate windows.

"That'll do." Eugene murmurs in a deadpan voice.

Not long thereafter, the Ice Queen herself comes flying out on her impressive frost created midair slide and Eugene lets out another low whistle.

"How much you wanna bet our Queenie was up there visiting that fine vintage, rascal Danish King– speak of the devil." Eugene murmurs to himself with a bit more venom than originally intended.

Stealthy Eugene and Maximus flatten into the wall below as inconspicuously as possible for the pair when an imposing graying figure stumbles out onto the balcony window ledge to stare out after her.

The monarch of Denmark gazes out to the morning sky and upward, as if searching for something as quite intangible as a shooting star. With a sigh and resigned shake of his head, King Herbert returns back into his empty royal bedroom.

As his sights now aim for that inviting open window of the second floor level above Egeskov Castle, Eugene utilizes Maximus' sturdy seventeen hands high standing back as a starting lift. The experienced agile climber man begins his arduous journey upwards, brick by brick…

"A visit from Her Legginess oughta have softened up that old timer. Unless he's been frozen into a solid popsicle… Either way, let's see what's going on up there, Max. Somebody's gotta straighten this corrupt kingdom's mess. And it starts at the top." Eugene looks up to Egeskov Castle's imposing stone fortress with thoughtful consternation on his stunning, handsome features.

* * *

 ** _Back inside the throne room's converted courtroom chamber…_**

Once the coffee and refreshment break had concluded, the ten princess wives of the Danish princes assembled who had been called upon for jury duty had settled up in the balconies as audience to witness the intense courtroom proceedings.

Rapunzel was not sure if she should stay to show her support for Hans, Kristoff, and Aged P, or go in search of Elsa, after her tall blonde cousin had dashed off.

But the empathic princess of Corona believed she knew Elsa enough by now, and loved her like a sister to know that her gifted cousin had not abandoned the man she had traveled hundreds of miles just to see, keeping the faith despite all odds.

Elsa loved Hans. And Hans loved Elsa.

Rapunzel was as sure of those two facts as she was that the heroic father of her future children wasn't just outside cooling his heels while this trial's terrible travesty was hanging life or death over his arraigned little brother, cousin and friend's father.

From the muttering and ill will towards Hans passing between the occupants of the throne room, that dire thought maybe wasn't too much of an exaggeration.

"Eugene, please do something!" Biting her lip, Rapunzel whispers to her shuddering self as a golden hued Pascal alights from Princess Elisabeth's shoulder to rest his compassionate head against Rapunzel's worried one when the Corona princess finally sits down in the audience balcony.

Sweet Princess Amalia of the Netherlands, seated beside Rapunzel, places a comforting hand atop the young Prussian woman's trembling one with a soft smile. But shy Amalia guiltily draws that palm back away when the whole room's curious discussions are silenced by an authoritative avowal.

"Order in the court!"

That's when Judge Prince Kaleb bangs his father's sceptre like a gavel down on the marble floor several times to call the court back into order.

"Now that our dietary needs have been met— _and we thank you ladies very much for that_ —I now call this court back into order." Prince Kaleb was floating somewhere between sarcasm and gratitude in the statement as he leads his dozen brothers in a condescending nod to his wife Princess Emma and sister-in-law Princess Frederika smiling down amicably from the balcony.

"Counsel for the accused. Stand forward." From the throne, the Crown Prince of Denmark's no-nonsense voice speaks in terse, unaffectionate terms to his youngest sibling. Hans Westergaard had volunteered himself to serve as attorney for the Prussian jeweler whom Count Rügen had dragged the tired princes into the court at this 6 AM in the morning to try.

"Your Honor?" Hans, as respectful and alert as ever, must compartmentalize his own troubled emotions that ranged from sanguine to devastated at Queen Elsa's unexpected appearance and just as unanticipated flight from Egeskov's throne room.

"We, the court, have carefully deliberated –" Kaleb first meets his Master Rügen's eyes with a touch of regret before his hazy grey-brown gaze lands back upon Hans. "—and your request to directly address your client's accuser, namely complainant Prince Rune, may accelerate matters, for all of us in this case." Prince Kaleb's eyes scan over the jury of his brothers who were all equally exhausted of this unanimously considered waste of time on this most busy morn.

"Once this minor matter is resolved expeditiously, we can adjudicate the more serious matter of sedition that you have laid before this learned court with all due justice, Count Rügen." Kaleb exchanges a meaningful glance with his inaudibly stewing, livid-eyed instructor.

Weighing the shrewdness of his persuasive influence at this juncture, Rügen nods tersely and holds his tongue as he takes a step aside.

"Captain Jorgensen. Please release the prisoner's bonds." Kaleb instructs the Captain of Egeskov's guard to free Hans from his handcuff bounds.

"Yes, then. Proceed, Squirrel. _Ehem_ , Counselor." Giving Hans the fitting respect this just Danish court demanded – _for now_ – Kaleb corrects himself from the disparaging moniker his youngest brother had been crudely deigned all his young life by the lot of them.

"Thank you, Sir." Prince Hans realized that he had only secured a sparse window of a chance to convey everything. He would selflessly give everything he had left in this world to perhaps be able to spare Aged P from twenty-five years incarceration.

Hans was acquainted with Danish law well enough to know that the little frail man - whom he impulsively swore to his new friends in the Snuggly Duckling to help bring home - had already been sentenced.

 _Please grant me consequential words, dear Lord. I have realized, at last, the hope I have held inside all these years to attain the heart of a Queen were all a vain, ephemeral dream… As it always should have been for an undeserving wretch like me…_

These melancholic thoughts begin to race as Hans collects himself to move fluidly, now unencumbered, across his father's throne room. But not without one final gaze at the icy moisture trails that had already melted into puddles on the hallowed marble floors in the Ice Queen's wake.

 _You were my unattainable fantasy, my precious Snowflake… For my past mistakes and irrevocable errors in judgment, I never will be the man you deserve… I will never be good enough to fulfill your dreams… So if the dream must end here and now, so be it._

 _Hans, just accept that Elsa of Arendelle will never, and could never, be yours…_

With these regretful, remorseful, and resigned thoughts, Hans' stylish figure in his Sjoforsvaret naval uniform and tall black boots resolutely takes a poised stance before the jury box on the opposite end of the room.

"Prince Rune. First of all, on behalf of my client and friend, Agelius Portia – known affectionately to those who respect him as ' _Aged P'_ – I apologize to you and your dear Princess Eugenia for any distress and heartache caused by this horrible misfortune concerning your momentous, significant stride towards matrimony." Hans tactfully begins his address with a cordial, genuine apology as he meets plaintiff Rune's shocked countenance with a conciliatory, assuaging gaze.

On the verge of spitting out something vicious in retort to what he expected would be Hans' anticipated combative, antagonistic, excuse-laden verbal assail, Prince Rune's twisted mouth hangs open. The eleventh in line prince is flabbergasted by the handsome redheaded man's unpredicted, apologetic language.

"Well… Y-you should be! Do you realize how embarrassing it was for me when Eugenia literally threw that faulty ring back in my face?! She was so insulted! And I may have lost her forever, now thanks to **him**!" The perplexed young man ungraciously sputters and spazzes out from his seat in the jury box across the throne room as he stands and points, worked up in the heated exchange.

"We thoroughly understand your unhappy sentiment and realize the alacrity required to make amends for this accidental error concerning the tenderness of a precious feminine heart, lest all be lost." In his disarming manner, charismatic Prince Hans sympathizes with his older brother's anguish and obvious attachment for the young Russian Princess.

"In so saying, may we propose an immediate plan that I believe will correct this conundrum in an equitable and justified fashion towards your desired goal. And if, in your vital opinion, you deem our proposal satisfactory enough to recall the charges in this case, you may permit this good man to return to his children whom he works besides in his beloved place of reputable business in Prussia." With earnestness behind his expressive green eyes, Prince Hans utilizes his well honed, relevant eloquence in public speaking to spellbind not only a jaw dropped Rune, but a great many number of his older brethren in this room, as well.

"What kind of balderdash is this?! This is a court of law! You Princes cannot allow this disinherited and disgraced upstart to exploit and contort our lawful justice system's righteous name for his own squandering means! Get back behind the dock where you belong, Devil Boy! This wastrel has no legal experience to be permitted to represent this criminal before the state!" His scarred shadowy face red and sneering in exasperation, Count Rügen interjects angrily with a hiss towards Hans under his breath when he senses the sway the silver-tongued devil's voice seemed to have over his supposedly conditioned and prejudiced audience.

"Master Rügen! Last I saw it, in reading the letter of the law in my Father the King's place, **_I_** am sole judge in this case. My ultimate judgment will not be challenged by anyone. I have already ruled to hear the Counselor's address to defend the accused. And he will be permitted to continue in this line of questioning a few moments more. Without interruption…Please." Resentful of being publicly called out before all of his gathered brothers, pompous Crown Prince Kaleb was ruffled by his regal authority being defied, even by his old teacher.

Kaleb holds his aching forehead after reprimanding his fencing instructor master from the throne.

"You have only a few minutes to finish describing your proposal, Counsel. So, make it pithy and direct to the point." Kaleb cognately instructs the tall and erect young man in the Sjoforsvaret officer's navel uniform who was standing before the jury box in Aged P's place.

"And as if your life depended upon it." Count Rügen appends the dour comment at his courtroom rival as he skulks with a glowering face back towards the sidelines.

"Understood, Your Honor." Glancing warily from Kaleb to Rügen, Hans swallows hard, knowing that this next sentence held within it all he had left to offer up his suave sleeve.

 _No pressure, Westergaard… Just let it go…_ Hans assuages his own uncertainties with an inward smirk to himself, Elsa's pristine visage and crystal tones ringing clear as a bell in his determined mind.

"Prince Rune, as an honorable gentleman, in all benevolence before this esteemed august committee, please answer me this: If you had come in good faith to this renowned, respected jeweler, known for his excellent workmanship throughout all of Europe's royalty and peerage, and had been provided with a suitable, fine, authentic engagement ring of the proper intrinsic value of gemstones and brilliance arranged in an exquisite, precious setting, would you not have been content to gratify your intended with the result?" Hans phrases his words carefully, and with great tact and charm to influence his not-so-swift brother to acquiesce.

In his lifelong struggle to be loved and accepted over the long, empty years, young Prince Hans of the Southern Isles had skillfully acquired a cunning ability to feel his way around other people's moods and sense their longings. Add a pleasing charm to his natural good looks, and debonair Hans could easily wrap others around his little finger.

So, as he picks up the new mantle of an attorney lawyer with panache, this clever Danish Prince could fully put those gifts to use.

"Yeah, of course I would have! What do you take me for?! I **am** a proper gentleman, no ifs, ands, or buts about it! I absolutely wanted my Eugenia to be thrilled with my choice!" Running a hand through his wild mane of rusty orange hair, Rune starts to capitulate to Hans' eloquent manipulation.

"As any proper, decent and gallant young man would wish for his future bride." Sympathetic, Hans smiles as he takes the calculated opportunity of his audience's rapt attention to produce from his interior uniform jacket pocket a small, yet infinitely valuable, polished and preserved item that had been hidden there in wait for years in a delicately wrapped pale pastel box awaiting its one and only true owner to open it.

Until now.

"So, then, if a flawless ring to be bestowed upon your intended was of greater value, beauty, rarity and high purity finest water than even the original agreed-upon, was to be presented immediately, would not the elegant lady in question be more pleased and immediately flattered to reinstate your fortuitous betrothal?" Hans' velvety voice sings the praises of a proposed certain item thus far unseen, described in such a tantalizing manner every ear was perked up.

"Well… I guess, if you put it that way…But, I would _have_ to have an _expert_ check any replacement new ring this time before presenting it to my finicky Eugenia… But if this ring's gems were even more valuable and rare as you say they are… And delivered here on the spot right away… I suppose I may be feeling benevolent enough to let the old geezer off easy…" Rune stipulates, though there was a small ray of hope suddenly flickering behind his enlightened eyes as he squints towards the undeniable glistening diamond and sapphire jewels and begins to imagine the happier scenario of presenting it to Eugenia.

However, when shadowy Count Rügen catches his young student's eye with the darkly shaking negative head of doubting disapproval, easily maneuvered Rune's entire attitude changes around sourly again.

"But even if Eugenia accepted it as good enough, where would this slowpoke, filthy old man get such a fine ring as a replacement in time? Receiving the first one took blessedly long enough! By the time that slow-as-molasses-in-January old timer gets around to being finished again, it will be too late to save my crumbling happiness. Eugenia's going back to Russia tonight! She'll probably never speak to me again! And it's all **your** fault! That stupid dumb ring you flubbed ruined my life, old man! This crook deserves to be punished!" Wrapping arms around himself protectively, hotheaded Rune lashes out vindictively at Hans.

As his suspicions outweigh what little hope he entertained, a perplexed Prince Rune aims his emotional contempt at all jewelry in general and Aged P in particular as he shakes his irate fist over Hans' shoulder at the bent over man with the jeweler's magnifying glass affixed to his eye.

"Perhaps one of precious quality and exquisite rarity is already present in this courtroom." The twin's evident anger so causes Hans to consolidate his already formulated decision. Serious and solemn, with a resigned and subtle sigh, Hans removes from his Arendelle naval jacket's inside breast pocket something that had resided right over his heart for ages.

Pausing dramatically, Hans had crossed the hushed throne room to be standing directly before the accuser of his client like an expert barrister before he displays the dainty little velvet lined box to his elder sibling.

Distracted, the burnt orange headed Prince glances from the intriguing object to his stupidly smiling twin brother Ruddi seated beside him and his diverted attention waggling fingers.

The startlingly pointy, yellow haired younger boy was all but one big drool as his dulled eyes were gazing out of the expansive side window of the court room facing the magnificent garden where a young Russian Princess with brown sausage curls was walking her big sister Eugenia's dog.

Princess Maria picks up little Blysk to wave his dumb paw back at them, reminding Rune of Princess Eugenia's adoration of the orangey furry creature she often associated with him.

Hans chooses this tense moment intermingled with innocent sweetness to delicately lift the lid from the petite package and reveal its glimmering contents before Rune's dazzled eyes.

"I object! This is outrageously unorthodox in a court of law! It's more akin to coercion and circus shenanigans than justice! And beyond that… Where did you acquire this purportedly priceless piece of fine jewelry, boy?! Which unsuspecting, gullible and naive female did you intend to bamboozle with its mesmerizing sparkle?" Rügen breaks his silence to roughly purloin the delicate ring box from Hans' hand.

The evil Count removes from the velvet box and examines the exquisite sterling silver and fine platinum _pavé_ setting of the flurry of precious stones accumulated into a stunning diamond crystal snowflake ring.

Rügen holds the gemstone encrusted ring up to the early dawn streaming through the throne room windows. It glimmers brilliantly in refracting light, in stark contrast with the swarthy Count of Württemberg's dark sneering features.

"I assure you, _Sir_ , that I purchased this item with my own well-earned naval salary over many accrued years of service. And I must insist that you do not question the acumen of any lady, especially not in the presence of this honorable court." With his freed hand raised in pointed protest towards Rügen's rude comment, Hans' fervent green eyes flash with indignant gallantry, as many a feminine eye in the balcony gallery gaze down upon him with admiring appreciation.

Hans' noble brow quirks upwards at the rude comment towards the particular singular icy blue lady in his mind's focus, even if she was not present in the courtroom. Hans may have now been resolved to give up the lofty ideal to ever be worthy to present this stunning jeweled precious piece to his snowflake angel, but he would not stand for hearing her good name besmirched by anyone.

"Your Honor!" Count Rügen pipes up with such malignant animosity that those listening in could sense his hatred so palpably thick in this courtroom that one could cut the air with a knife. "Let us put a finish to this nonsense so the court can justifiably prosecute the more serious case of sedition and treason hanging over these criminals' heads. Dreadful crimes which we all know the just punishment outcome for in our great nation of laws require the swift enforcement of quick sentence to the full extent of that law immediately in the King's stead. You will make him proud of the fierce Danish heritage you competently executed in his absence, Crown Prince Kaleb, to show the world how the King of Demark treats turncoat traitors to the world." Rügen symbolically unsheathes his beloved sword he had named 'Zornhau' for the punishing connotation of the fencing term 'Wrathful Strike'.

The dark Count's hand itches to inflict ultimate pain, with vengeful eyes upon one Hans Westergaard, who was at last in his vengeful amputated finger's grasp…

"Yes, we will implement our strict law's justice to the miscreants, as you describe, promptly, Master." His own brow knit dark and foreboding of power, Kaleb answers his teacher's persuasion as belligerent Rügen anticipated.

But with a glance upwards at Princess Elisabeth's sudden coughing spasm, Kaleb meets his wife Emma's compassionate eyes, and his hard gaze softens ever so minutely.

"After the first plaintiff decides if this, _what appears to the court_ , is a suitable litigation to settle his case against the accused. I give you exactly one minute more to petition your offer, Counsel, before we enforce sentencing." Sitting back down calmly to his father's throne, Crown Prince Kaleb of the Southern Isles gives his own lordly command to his erstwhile youngest brother to proceed.

"Prince Rune. Would not, pray tell, these flawless diamond, sapphire, and blue topaz gemstones, set in a crystalline European snowflake of pure silver and stunning platinum _pavé_ design, one-of-a-kind engagement ring serve to please your fastidious fiancée?"

Addressing his elder sibling with due respect, charming Hans holds the sparkling silver platinum ring in question. He proudly displays in his palm the pale velvet box that contained the five carat diamond studded ring with the intricate multitude of gem sapphires and topaz blue jewels before Rune's bedazzled eyes.

The orangey haired eleventh Danish prince leans over Mattias' annoyed shoulder in the jury box with wide eyes.

Impetuous Rune then childishly snatches the sparkling item from Hans' thin hand with unconvinced, cynical eyes that slit as he turns over and inspects something he knew nothing about.

All the other dozen Westergaard brothers lean back and in to the second jurist's row to see their discarded outcast's intriguing offer. Each man gazes upon the beautiful gemstone ring resplendent in the open velvet box in Rune's ruddy hand.

The ring Hans had purchased long ago had been burning a hole where it always was kept close to his heart for many solitary years. The brilliant platinum silver band was set with perfect flawless diamonds, sapphires and blue topaz in a lovely snowflake shape that the naval officer had sunk every rigsdaler of his hard-earned salary in hopes of one day presenting it to a Queen… And not just any Queen…

…Queen Elsa of his heart…

"A genuine silver and platinum band with **_five_** carat diamonds and other gems?! Har har har! He's pulling our leg, isn't he, Lars? You studied all about authenticating ancient crown jewels and precious metals and the like in your college days. Let's have good old Lars check out the Squirrel's claim, Kaleb." Dubious businessman Prince Mattias had delved in enough money changing and bartering in fine jewelry from rich old widows to wonder about the silver platinum piece's veracity.

"Good idea! Just for the fun of it!" Voluble Prince Peiter joins in the unbefitting jollity at Hans' expense.

"If it will expedite matters, by all means, do it." Holding his head in his hands, frustrated Crown Prince Kaleb consents to his fifth in line brother's request.

"Well I…must admit a passing knowledge… Let me see it, Rune…" The Westergaard brainiac, whom all the other dozen brothers may not have been inclined towards for his boring indoor activities, surely would have a credible opinion on the diamond platinum ring's authenticity.

The ring Rune had snatched from Hans is passed from incredulous Prince to Prince. The twelve man jury of brothers each look down at it in doubtful, cynical mistrust up close of the shiny exhibit A, until it finally alights into Lars' intellectual digits.

"Hmm… Yes…" Prince Lars had been rifling through his bountiful jacket pockets for just the right instrument for the past minute or so since his services were offered by Mattias abruptly until his wife Princess Isabelle bitterly calls down from the balcony in a loud whisper:

"Lars! It's in your top left vest pocket!" Where all of the ladies had been raptly watching the courtroom drama scene from above, Princess Isabelle's projected resonant voice echoes through the hushed throne room. She speaks with a bemused smile down to her ditzy husband, informing him of a certain tool's hidden location on his own disorganized personage.

That was, after all, every wife's duty to keep her discombobulated man straight, was it not?

"Oh, yes, Isabelle. Correct, as usual." Lars mumbles as his searching fumbling fingers dunk into that side of his vest pocket where his other half had directed him to. Prince Lars extracts a jeweler's magnifying glass eyepiece of his own, and removes his spectacles to use it. It was a skill that the educated scholar had picked up in his Egyptian excavation days of yore when he and some university friends dallied in uncovering a Pharaoh's treasures with little success.

But he did manage to bring a few ornate golden sculptures back to Rosenberg Palace for the random oddity from his eccentric visits abroad.

"Indeed, Hans." After a few minutes of inspecting the ring under debate with great depth, Lars looks up to meet the pleading viridescent green eyes of the little brother he hadn't exchanged a word with in ages. And though, at first, apathetic Lars gives Hans that stiff, indifferent stare, it is soon followed by the slightest smirk in reminiscence of a plucky, reviled youngest child who was often wily enough to outfox the den of lions presiding in this castle.

"I would rate the metal of this ring of a rare platinum and finely polished silver quality. It's gemstone clarity and assessed translucence, at a quick scientific glance, mind you, would be classed as flawless and of high superiority multiple carats. Quite acceptable." Lars analyzes with the clinically honest truth that his brothers all expected of the unromantic intellectual to remain, as always, unbiased.

"But nonetheless, the question remains, **where** did he get it from?" Count Rügen plans a questionable seed in the barren fields of his students' minds.

"You must've stolen that ring from some unsuspecting lady in a kingdom he bamboozled. Didn't you, Squirrel?" Jostling his brother Franz leaning on his shoulder awake where the hunter was snoring in the seat beside him, pessimist Prince Berte accuses Hans. There was a bit of green eyed jealousy rearing its head that the little Squirrel of an annoying brother had outdone most of them in his choice of jewelry to please the feminine heart.

"N-no! I did not. It is simply that, years ago, I invested every rigsdalar I earned from my dozen tours of duty of my own available salary, for the chance at a promise for a future someday. I swear it." Hans felt like a little child all over again, trying his best to please and make excuses for himself against an inhospitable, ungenerous crowd of deriding naysayers, also known as his immediate family.

"Where **_did_** you obtain such a valuable piece of precious jewelry, Squirrel?" Prince Anders skeptically questions from the jury box. The urbane Danish top politician had more than a passing acquaintance with fine jewelry. His own ornate, sophisticated palace in Fredericksburg was the showcase of where Denmark's crown jewels, dazzling gold and silver as they may be, were on display for curious visitors to go on weekend forays.

"And on the salary of a lowly First Lieutenant in the Søværnet? How many times did you dip into the cash till of the petty officer on board your vessel, to add to all the rest of your abysmal crimes?" Navy man Prince Jürgen pipes up in his real curiosity to this disowned son of the realm who had also spent the greater portion of his life in the Danish Royal Navy. The lifelong Navy man was interested to know how estate indigent Hans could have such funds required to purchase that caliber of jewelry on an enlisted officer's per mansem flag pay for each day of his half year of shipbound deployment.

"Never! I have never stolen anything from a lady in my life! At least…not intentionally…" Hans responds in an uncommon, awkward stutter, flustered, insulted, and a bit ashamed for the ridicule of the heartfelt revealed item he had sought out with the greatest goal of his dreams to take wing.

"Promise of what future? Who exactly did you have your sights set on to propose to with that degree of a splendid ring?" Interested in the drama by now, Royal Ambassador to France Prince Ivers joined in the conversation in sincere curiosity. He and many of his brothers never considered Hans very likely to wed a Royal match without his father, the King of the Southern Isles' consent, nor the arranged marriage sponsorship that this kingdom's pariah was sorely lacking, with little hope of alteration.

"A woman, who, in her right mind, would never accept me… **should** never accept me. But that unattainable dream is what has sustained me all these years..." Hans unintelligibly murmurs to himself, with wistful melancholy of what would never be.

With a cocked head in puzzled consternation, Prince Ivers passes the velvet slipcase back into his little brother's hands as Didrik, beside him, silently watches and listens.

Hans neither dared nor wished to meet that particular big brother's eyes in the courtroom.

And the sentiment seemed to be mutual, for Didrik continued to keep his eyes trained down to the floor rather than make contact with Hans.

"Well, Rune? It's up to you. If this more valuable, new ring presented as unexpected evidence would be suitable to perhaps salvage your broken betrothal, would you agree to drop the charges? And then, the rest of us can get on with the more pressing, criminal trial still in mitigation." 'Judge' Prince Kaleb coolly presses his whiny younger sibling to accept the generous offer and quit being an annoyance.

"Yeah! We've got to prosecute that big oaf giant for invading our kingdom on his wicked flying reindeer!" Ruddi comes to life when he jumps up next to his deliberating twin, with an awkward finger stuck out at Kristoff across the courtroom.

The big Norwegian mountain man was paying little or no attention to him, irking Ruddi even more.

"Prince Ruddi! Stay in your seat! It is the grave trial of sedition this Court must attend to! Not your silly sightings and rambling imagination. Nor this ridiculous five ring mockery that this iniquitous reprobate has dragged our auspicious justice system into." Count Rügen was at his patience's limit. He couldn't stand here a moment more and allow his arch nemesis, the demon offspring, to seduce this court procedure he himself had plotted for the vile boy's ruin.

 _Flying reindeer, indeed. Either way I will have at you, this time, Devil Boy…_

"Did I not raise you princes to all be men without the encumbrance of a sentimental heart's weak compassion to distract you from your duty?" Master Rügen admonishes the students he had raised from young boys into grown men in his own cold, maniacally clawing instruction.

"Yes… But I still want to marry my Eugenia." In a spoiled, childlike whine, the stubborn burnt sienna haired twin starts to bend to the new brilliant young defense attorney's persuasive argument and all of its shiny, eye-catching glitter.

"I suppose, if these gemstones are of the high quality she likes… I'll try to give this to her at Father's garden party this afternoon. If Eugenia accepts it properly this time, I'll drop all charges and commute your sentence, Portia. And then you can proclaim to everyone how noble and beneficent I was to you. Deal?" Rune tries to put on the face of a tough negotiator. But his impetuous nature works in Hans' favor for once, as Prince Rune haughtily brushes back his spiky hairdo, cocksure of himself.

"This just had better not be another one of your clever tricks, Squirrel. Remove that ring from its box and hand it to me, swearing it's legit on Mother's grave, that you sent her to." With one more nasty dig at Hans, Rune's garish hazel eyes slit with a final suspicious glance at his younger brother, laced with the cruel reminder of the resentful grudge they all held against the youngest Westergaard child all his ill begotten life.

Hans closes his eyes and sighs before answering all of their pitiless stares.

"It is genuine in every way. I solemnly swear on all that is holy." Hans soberly announces in even tones, connecting squarely with Rune's eyes sincerity reflecting.

"…As real and true as the love for the one precious lady whom I'll never deserve to walk in the shadow of, never mind pledge this forever promise to…" Rune did not fully comprehend all of what Hans continued to mutter under his breath with a heavy heart.

But from afar, someone's keen ears did hear, and had taken note.

Prince Rune reaches out to claim the brilliantly sparkling precious ring of diamond, sapphire and blue topaz from Hans' sentimental hand.

With one last decision, Hans stares down at every fantasy he ever worked for about to be given away, and resolves that he would never dare to dream again. The handsome redhead removes the ring from its velvet case until he was holding out the dazzling, glimmering ring between his resigned, white gloved fingers to an entirely different recipient than his prospective expectations envisioned.

"Stop!" That's when an utterly unpredicted voice comes from somewhere close by to break through the courtroom's stunned silence. It thoroughly confuses the princes of Denmark, their wives and Count Rügen most of all, as the fragile, tinkling sound of ice crystals echo throughout the massive throne room.

"Your Princess Eugenia cannot accept that ring!" Startling man and woman alike in hearing range to that courtroom, the coloratura layers of that singular voice was so full of self-assurance and courage and something so much more indefinable as a cherished love, the term 'fragile' no longer applied.

Hans cannot even begin to register what was happening as he freezes stock still in his tracks, dumbfounded into utter silence by what all his confounded senses were signaling to him.

And then that all too familiar treasured voice's choice of words was about to obliterate his mental faculties entirely.

But the desolate floundering mind of the last, unworthy and unwanted thirteenth Danish Prince of the Southern Isles who prided himself on keeping calm, cool and collected in every contingency with his ability to adapt to any situation, never would've accounted for an occurrence such as this.

Because it was no less short of an unbelievable miracle about to take place in this court.

A forgiveness of surreal magnitude, all for an undeserving sinner, as was given in the greatest love story ever told…

"Because I already have!" Like a magical dancing Princess riding on dingling icicle bells, Ice Queen Elsa makes her grand and daring, enticing appearance in her slinky, crystal encrusted skintight azure blue ice gown, shocking everyone watching into astonished gasps.

Cryokinetically throwing open the large double door leading into Egeskov Castle's throne room, Queen Elsa of Arendelle steps her icy high heels to click across the marbleized floors.

"Crown Prince Kaleb, Your Highnesses. Please forgive me for interrupting your kingdom's proceedings so rudely and indecorously without announcement, as well as my earlier ruse in posing as a maid in your household. But in my desperate search I did not wish to disturb you good people in your festivity, particularly since you were in celebration of your dear father – the esteemed Royal King of Denmark's birthday. But I, Queen Elsa of Arendelle, do humbly beg your audience now." With as much respectful decorum as she could assemble, Elsa boldly announces her entrance statement to this imposing, intimidating group of astonished into hushed silence men in the throne room's court.

But none were more stunned silent and thunderstruck staggered than Hans Westergaard, who stares down at Elsa in utter disbelief.

But Elsa Bernadotte was not done wowing the handsome redhead yet into total flabbergasted submission.

"Oh, Hans! My foolish, heroic prince! I have been so anxious to find you! We've missed you so much up in my kingdom of Arendelle. But it is just like you to be so gallant and selfless to give of yourself so generously. Imagine coming all this way to assist your friends! Even to the point of offering **_my_** engagement ring, the one you so sweetly traveled all this distance to have refitted for me by this expert jeweler, Arendelle's official gemstone artisan, to help some dear friends in need along the way." Elsa looks over to the witness stand with a magnanimous and innocently sweet expression on her lovely face at Aged P and a totally baffled Kristoff.

The tall blond man was giving his sister-in-law an incredulous look that after this, he would never fully understand women—extrasensory Wind Whisperer psychic powers or no.

After neatly sliding herself into a shocked Hans' astounded arms effortlessly, Ice Queen Elsa demurely slides her fourth left hand engagement ring finger into the similarly perfect fit, slim size five silver platinum diamond snowflake ring still held between his fingers for her ladylike slender digit as if it was made for her.

Just like Elsa was absolutely certain now, through laughter and tears, hardships and strife, hope and joy, and pain and love that this journey called life had taken them through already at such a young age together, Prince Hans Westergaard of the Southern Isles suited Queen Elsa of Arendelle, hand in glove.

Overcome and for once totally speechless, with a gaping open mouth, Hans attempts to pull back from Elsa's elegant – and surprisingly strong – embrace, as he shakes his addled head down at her determined face.

"You always are such a perfect gentleman to me, Prince Hans." Elsa yet again astounds all by not only her affectionately fond words, but also by her shocking actions, as she bestows a lingering kiss to Hans' awestruck cheek.

Elsa's tender hands reach up to bring his head down to her with a touch to his sideburns and a gentle smile up at him. She had to overcome and set aside all her natural shyness and modesty for this once-in-a-lifetime performance.

 _…Put on a show…_

Elsa's gorgeous azure gaze full of obvious love upon Hans then extends towards the Judge, to the princes in the jury box and finally to the Princesses gathered up in the audience gallery to whom the lissome Ice Queen had come to Egeskov under false expedients these past few days.

"Your Highnesses. I am here to collect my fiancé, Prince Hans - Norway's new _Vise Admiral_ Westergaard – to receive the award ceremony commendations for meritorious honor he has earned and so well deserves." With a deep breath, Elsa boldly and honestly states her intent and purpose for being here in the Southern Isles under such pretense with great humbleness.

At her new and startling revelation, many of the royals assembled begin to titter back and forth with one another, some warily cautious; some with stimulated excitement.

"Did she just say Hans was her fiancé!?"

"Squirrel and the _Queen_ of Arendelle?!"

"I knew that new maid was suspicious…"

"The Ice Queen herself, right in our midst!"

"It's sorcery!"

"She's supposed be very powerful."

"Didn't he try to kill her once?!"

"Is she insane?!"

"That dress is scandalous!"

"Whew! I wish my wife was in that good a shape!"

"Does she really have a liaison with Prince Hans?"

A stunned hush of whispers from the jury box to the gallery balcony befalls the energized throne room, all eyes glued to the fascinating pair of young lovers at the center of attention in Egeskov's court.

Unable to think beyond the deluge of the blue sea of her intoxicating eyes, Hans sinks to his knees before Elsa, thoroughly staggered to watch this delicate creature of beauty brazenly falsify herself before Egeskov's court.

She had humiliated and lowered herself only to stop his brothers' and Count Rügen's wrath from being poured out upon him.

 _All for me? Elsa, why? Just let me go…_ _I should mean nothing to you_ …

Hans' glistening green eyes tremble under the dazzling glow of the Ice Queen's lovely, exquisite smile over him.

Elsa's excited eyes dance upon the sparkling intricate snowflake diamond navettes adorned with flawless clarity of the sapphire and blue topaz jewel encrusted crystals set on the platinum silver band that complemented the piece perfectly.

Momentarily admiring the magnificently crafted snowflake starburst multi-gemstone ring on her left hand ring finger, Elsa affectionately pets Hans' red loosed hair back to his noble brow. With a coquettish, self-assured brilliant smile down at the astonished man kneeling at her feet Elsa turns her attention back to the throne as she hears herself being addressed.

"If I may interrupt your- _ahem_ \- reunion, Your Majesty. May the court clear up a point? Queen Elsa, is it? I had a feeling that Elsie the maid was too good to be true." Foreperson of the jury, Prince Anders vaunts his pre-recognition of the maid whom he had just flirted with minutes ago and her now transformation into one of the most important Royal monarch's of thie Scandinavian region.

"This ring that the defendant's – _ahem_ – Counsel has offered the plaintiff in recompense was originally gifted to **_you_** in betrothal, Queen Elsa?" The political Prince, renowned for debating skills, gains the floor to question the new – _admitted stunningly eye-catching_ – face in the, up until now, thoroughly dull court trial.

Particularly since Prince Anders, who had already commented to himself of this pale young woman's resemblance to someone from his own past, was immediately drawn to anything in connection with Princess Idun of Drottningholm and her sad fate.

"Yes, I can assuredly say that this special ring was created at Prince Hans' request, especially just for me." Elsa admits in all candor, as she looks into a blushing Hans' guilty eyes and sees her claim to be true.

"I have come to collect Vise Admiral Hans Westergaard of Norway's Sjoforsvaret for the knighthood and heroic awards ceremony in Arendelle at my father – the King of Arendelle's bequest." Elsa announces with her head held high for all to hear in this foreign nation's throne room.

"What!?"

"At whose request?"

"Whom did she say?"

"Do you speak of King Agdar of Arendelle, Your Majesty?" Sitting forward in the throne in disbelief, Prince Kaleb's already flustered mind so early in the morning reels as he blinks and rubs his aching head.

First the Queen of Norway's appearance; then her attachment to his youngest, most unsuitable brother, and now once again, at her declaration that her reported deceased parent was alive and no less asking for Hans to be awarded a knighthood beyond the Vise Admiralship that he apparently had already acquired somewhere along the way.

"Yes. My father and my mother, the King and Queen of Arendelle, were rescued from a five-year captivity, in no small part, due to the valiant heroics of this man. Prince Hans came to the rescue when we needed him most, and has gained our family's trust and my devotion. As well as my heart." Elsa speaks eloquently and calmly sanguine with her pronouncement as she touches Hans' sideburns with a stately fondness.

Queen Elsa then moves in a regal gait towards the throne with her head proudly erect with each statement of fact she was, as character witness, attesting to the adjudicating judge sitting on the throne.

"The King of Arendelle lives? Father will be surprised… By many things this day. This changes everything…" Crown Prince Kaleb considers the enormity that could alter the political landscape of Scandinavia at this royal woman's assertion that Norway's mysterious King was back in power.

"Yes, yes. This is all very entertaining, your Majesty." Irate and impatient, court prosecutor Count Rügen had had enough of this trifling chitchat as he glares at Elsa with more wary disdain than observant respect.

He feels a shiver go up his spine as the Royal Norwegian monarch flows past where he was idly leaning against the witness box, intimidating Aged P.

"But your claim to this offered dubious piece of allegedly priceless jewelry –" Rügen talks down his nose at the sparkling snowflake delicate ring that was now upon the tall platinum blonde's delicate hand, especially in reference to anything that devil boy Hans personally acquired, Queen and all.

"– does not assuage the facts of this case concerning fraudulent goods being passed on to one of the sons of our kingdom by that lowly Bavarian peddler." The darkly scarred face man grumbles about this trivial interruption of this already flimsy line of defense.

The bearded villain purposefully strides the court floor between Elsa and Hans, who rises to his feet, ready to spring into defense of his lady love with cautious eyes trained on Egeskov's fencing instructor.

"Yeah! That's right! Now I have no new ring to offer Eugenia!" Like a magic lantern just fizzled off a puff of smoke in his airy head, Prince Rune suddenly realizes that his done deal and hopes for reconciliation with Eugenia were evaporated again now, since Hans' spicy girlfriend just took back that pretty ring offered to him.

 _Indian giver, Hans!_

"The fact that my esteemed opponent attempted to give away a costly, valuable item that you, dear Queen Elsa, were already pledged ownership of – however insincere the breach of promise intent may have been - demonstrates the fraudulent knave's artifice. And that dissimilation proves my point that this duplicitous reprobate's word cannot be trusted." Dastardly Rügen latches onto this window of opportunity to throw suspicion on his nemesis yet again, despite Hans' icily luxuriant and powerful new connection.

"Your Majesty, we have known this hellion since his early childhood and we must amply warn you that this rapscallion is infamous around here for being a shameless posturing liar and cunning trickster. The winning charms and good looks of this artful varlet may have deceived many others before you. But believe us when we tell you that this manipulative pariah has been nothing but difficulty to his father and this kingdom since the day he was born. Am I not right, Your Highnesses?" The Count eggs on the twelve older Princes and their lingering resentment and underlying anger towards the outcast boy. The fully evil man intended to humiliate and besmirch Hans in every way before this mysterious northern Queen and all the growing audience in the court of Egeskov.

Several early morning diplomatic visitors began to join the courtroom in their curiosity, after being greeted 'Good Morning!' giddily by blabbermouth Olaf in the front Hall, alerted them that something special was going on in the throne room.

"Perhaps that is because none of you ever gave him a chance to prove his worth. I believe, as a Christian woman, that we each have faltered in the past and have fallen short of the glory of God. Prince Hans asked for the Lord's gift of forgiveness for his immortal soul, and he has proven himself worthy of honor in my kingdom for not only his heroism and gallantry in the hour of my nation's greatest need, but also the sincere heartfelt repentance for the past transgressions he has displayed in so many ways before me. His humility would not permit him to accept the accolades, but I believe wholeheartedly in him. If it is his judgment that this entire incident was an accident, I will stand behind him no matter what." Elsa begins to lay her own defense case before the jury of Westergaard brothers and the judge who seemed to be listening intently to her sincere words.

"Oh, Hans is a sinner, all right." Prince Jürgen says to the guffaws and snickers of several of the other princes who were duly uncomfortable with Elsa's honest, soul searching liturgy.

"Is it not written in the Scriptures that we are all to forgive our brothers more than seventy times seven? Who among us is without sin who can cast the first stone?" The devout young woman applies Jesus parabolic teachings to this modern day trial of brother against brother. She prays her gentle words might touch some small part of their coldhearted souls to soften towards their youngest sibling.

"It is through Prince Hans' closer walk with the Lord that he and I have become soulmates. We understand one another in a way that only comes from the blessing of our Creator above. In my own wild distress, Hans was the one who lifted me up with his calm composed tranquility, compassion, and courage. He was the only one able to reach into the coldness of my insecure heart, guiding me, teaching me to embrace who I am. When I am near him, I feel complete…secure…safe…"

"…And loved." Elsa pours out her heart as her gaze encompasses the green pastures of Hans' enraptured eyes. He kisses her hand at the close of her speech as Elsa entreaties before judge and jury as character witness for Hans in this case trial with her left hand ring finger shimmering against his sallow cheek.

Though only a few of the dozen Southern Isles princes were even slightly moved by her womanly confession of love, Elsa's touching pleas perhaps make their mark on someone listening in, unseen.

"Prince Kaleb! Thrilling, no doubt, this song and dance show this lady portrays, but this is an important court for us members to have to stand here and be subject to this – _pardon me, Madam_ – driveling female? She may – or may not, in actuality – be the Queen of Arendelle – we do have little credibility of her authenticity, other than the condemned's dubious word. But even if she is who she says, the modern legend Queen's overemotional plea has no place in the deliberation, nor our time-honored 'court of law." Count Rügen's gravelly voice full of animosity tries to throw cool water on Elsa's warm testimony for the defendant in such a rude manner.

In Arendelle, King Agdar may have been a bit stiff and stuffy, as well as quite hidebound about propriety and royal etiquette. But when it came to his female children deserving as much respect as young women as men, King Agdar's beliefs were quite modern as he and Queen Idun prepared their girls to stand in a harsh world equal to men.

"Snowflake. Please. It is not necessary for you to embarrass yourself and your good name wrapped in my shame. With whatever high opinion you have held of me still retained in memory, please don't involve yourself with my disgrace in the kingdom of my birth. I beg of you to go back home to the loving embrace of your restored dear family and the peaceful rule over your countrymen whose respect and veneration you have well earned." Like a chivalrous knight, Hans turns and whispers in Elsa's ear, coming to his lady fair's ingratiated rescue in the only way he could see fit now.

Even if it meant appealing to his one lifeline to cut her ties with him and leave his inadequacy behind.

"You deserve so much better. Please, Elsa, forget about me."

"Hans… I can never forget _you_." Elsa's perfectly clear eyed crystalline whisper echoes through the courtroom as the daybreak strains of light chance upon the reflective gemstones of her new ring. Her elegant hand brushes back her hair in her nervous habit, playing upon the mane of her platinum tresses.

Elsa's shivering tableau of emotions made it practically impossible for the young ice mistress, trying to maintain her powerful control, to barely breathe. She watched as her handsome Hans was being again restrained by Count Rügen's gnarled sixth finger deducted hand on his svelte shoulder and dragged away by the Egeskov guards back from the jurists' seats.

But Elsa and Hans' interlocked eyes across the throne room were not communicating the many mixed signals their spoken words were saying.

No.

Trembling, their blue and green eyes were melting into a shared adoration that neither bursting young heart in love, try as they might, could deny any longer …

In the warmth of sunlight beginning to pierce the rigid cold courtroom, nearly every heart was stirred to see and hear the allure of irrefutable first love that dazzled the audience above and stunned the astonished jury and judge below.

"If all this is so, these trials may jeopardize our important economic and peaceful foreign relations with Arendelle to the north, Storbror…" Having no love lost for Hans himself, but seeing political winds changing, savvy statesman Prince Anders nonetheless had quickly left his jurist's seat to whisper in his big brother Prince Kaleb's ear the warning of geo-social political ramifications of this liaison.

Kaleb's eyes scrutinize from Queen Elsa's pleading face to Hans' bewildered, yet admiring one, as he notes the familiarity passing between their tender gaze.

Even the Devil himself could recognize this wordless, selfless, incontestable bond between the disinherited Prince of the Southern Isles and the Queen of Arendelle—as strong and true enough for her to go to war for him.

In so deeming the fruitless outcome of this unexpected trial by fire for his despised arch nemesis whom he thought he finally had to rights in his clutches, Count Rügen decides to take evasive action. He decides finally to do something that would ensure his revenge before weakling emotions such as compassion or pity voiced their undesirable away into this concise, logical court and he lost control of the opinion he had masterfully swayed for a clear-cut conviction in the other, substantially more fatal in punishment case of sedition.

Count Humperdinck Rügen of **Würr** temberg **,** the King's constant advisor and self appointed right hand man as instructor of his sons, takes it upon himself to ensure that justice was served in this weak world too full of mawkish sentiment in the only way he knew how best.

The wicked sword master maneuvers his way behind Hans in such an obscure angle behind a podium to stealthily unsheathe his weapon of choice the rest of the way quietly behind Hans' distracted back in the shadows, unbeknownst to everyone else gathered in the throne room whose full attention was on the main attraction, Queen Elsa.

As silent as the grave, stealthy Count Rügen prepares to plunge his sly, unforgiving blade into Hans' unsuspecting heart that had found love despite the odds that the evil force in the dark man had always done his best to keep the King's youngest offspring from ever indulging in.

Though through the reflective prism of that special platinum snowflake engagement ring's future promise, Elsa and Hans' eternal moment gaze across the vast expanse was indefinable. But the threat of a cool steel blade was aimed to bring that promise to a linear end.

The wicked man would risk all his power and position with the maddened facade of justice still in his favor, to slice this unfathomable new love story's beauty asunder.

With unmitigated hatred in his seething eyes, the dark Count deftly positions his razor-sharp sword for a lethal thrust straight through despised Hans' pierced heart. And in doing so, Count Rügen would stake his cold blind vengeance against the warmth of forgiveness' true love that this evil villain would never understand…

* * *

 _Sjoforsvaret –_ Royal Norwegian Navy

 _Søværnet –_ Royal Danish Navy

* * *

 _Happy Thanksgiving, Frozen friends!_

 _So how was that for a Helsa shocker? Their relationship just took a surprising turn towards…matrimony!? Did Elsa indirectly propose to Hans?_

 _Whew! Hans had that stunning engagement ring hidden in his pocket all this time?_

 _'That ring is mine!'_

 _'_ _I am here to collect my fiancé, Prince Hans.'_

 _Wow! Elsa! You go, girl!_

 _Egeskov's court certainly was full of miracles today, wasn't it! Did you all like my nod to 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' gypsy song inspired title Court of Miracles?_

 _Were you as impressed as I was with that shy, introverted, hands-off ice lady's boldness and quick thinking to save her man? Do I hear wedding bells in the not so distant future for this star-crossed couple? ^0*_

 _What repercussions do I hear resounding from the rest of the cast at this surprise_ _if Hans survives?_

 _(Methinks ANNA, Papa, and Kai for starters are not going to be very pleased with this, Elsa!)_

 _We hope you are having a wonderful time with family and friends, watching parades, eating turkey, pies and all the tasty fixins and celebrating the founding of this blessed country._

 _But don't forget what this day is truly all about: just as the pilgrims and founders bowed their heads showing our gratitude to Almighty God above for the gift of this bountiful feast and warm homes and hearts He instilled within us to share with loved ones, far and near._

 _Go_ _d bless this_ _Land_ _of_ _Freedom_ _and all of the precious people within it!_

 _Thank you, Lord for this day and all the days of our lives you've given us in this amazing land you have blessed with plenty, as our great founding fathers began all those years ago under Your guidance, Lord. Amen._

 _^^ Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble Gobble! ^^_

 _And Happy Birthday week to my big sister/ best friend forever whom I started writing this story for 2 years ago this week!_ _Now we're getting to some climax in this thrilling Helsa romance!_

 _This one's for you, Setsuna! I couldn't wish for a better sister just like you! ^_^_

* * *

Did you enjoy this chapter and its heart-pounding cliffie, too?

 _Please review this course changing chapter for our Helsa romance!_

 _God bless you and your family at this blessed time of year!_

 _HarukaKou_

 _'Now thank Thee all our God, with hearts and hands and voices!_ _Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices!'_


	24. Chapter 24 - Birthright

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 24**

 **"Birthright"**

Minutes ago, in Egeskov Castle's second story bedroom window, King Herbert stares blindly out the window towards the sunlight until the tears found in his grey-blue eyes burn with a sting akin to sorrow.

King Herbert had been lying on his stately bed, studying the childish drawing his youngest son Hans had illustrated years ago, at some tender age, that had just been brought to sit in his stately lap.

The depiction featured Herbert's long departed wife Louise in an almost ethereal state of observation upon the goings-on of those left in the home she was no longer resident thereof. That, more than anything, caught the attention of this cold-hearted father for several minutes now. Ever since that exasperating Norwegian beauty Ice Queen parading around as one of the castle's chamber maids had left the Danish monarch in baffled astonishment with the decades old parchment.

"Louise, I need your patient guidance now more than ever…" Being alone for so many years, Herbert, in his lengthening years, had begun to talk to himself. More distinctly, to the full-length portrait of his long departed wife, Queen Louise, that had been the recluse monarch's only companion for many long years.

King Herbert's eyes glaze over from gazing upon the beautiful red haired woman with the kindest of eyes to down at the pair of letters that that upstart Queen of Norway had so rudely placed on his bedside before she left in a huff.

The Danish King's eyes loiter down again at one of the pages the intelligent man had already astutely translated from the French language a Gypsy woman wrote in, once upon a time.

"Could it be? Agnès was murdered by Count Rügen? And her child lived?" Herbert puts the perfidious facts logically together from the two epistles he had, at first in curiosity, reluctantly taken up. But then he soon devoured its sordid contents in horrified shock.

One letter was from young Agnès in her last message to anyone on earth.

And that 'anyone' turned out to be his dear wife Louise, whose second missive assured his guilt-ridden conclusions.

"Oh Louise…you knew all this time and never said a word… How could I have been so blind to your compassion and empathy for a woman and her offspring you should have had only enmity for?" Herbert murmurs to the magnanimous portrait of gentility on the wall with a melancholic sigh.

"And Agnès la Cavalier… I can only beg your forgiveness for never deeming to inquire more of the doom my ignorance and misbegotten trust unwittingly caused you. As for losing your child… _our_ child… between the cracks of life all those years ago…" King Herbert holds up to his dimming eyesight the yellowed with age letter in his hand from the beautiful young and wild Parisian street vendor who had sent this pleading missive to his wife by way of the Sisters of the Notre Dame Cathedral itself.

Her expressive written words had begged for Herbert's wife Queen Louise to take in and care for Agnès' soon-to-be-orphaned child. The clever young Gypsy girl knew her time on earth was up when she saw that vile lackey of the Danish King named Rügen stalking her. The cruel villain surely would have killed little Eugene as well, had Agnès not taken matters into her own skillful hands to send her precious boy far away thirty-three Springs ago…

Slowly but surely, a little more of the ice shard implemented ages ago in the King's cold heart melts away with an unbidden, warm regretful tear in his eye reflected in this morning's fresh sunlight.

"Lost and found department." A droll, crass voice snidely enters from out of nowhere, breaking the still silence of the King of the Southern Isles' grand, empty bedroom.

Shielding his bedazzled eyes with a large wrinkled old hand, Herbert strains in the blinding sunlight streaming through the open balcony window towards the svelte figure of a dark-haired young scoundrel peering in through the egress rather unexpectedly.

"How dare you so rudely enter the King's private rooms!" Indignant Herbert's proud back goes up at this intrusive rapscallion who was too uncouth to announce himself properly before he bounds in agile leaps the rest of the way into the King's bedroom window.

Herbert immediately reaches for the rope bell ring to call for a servant's aid. But the dark shadow swiftly skulks in unusual silence across the large master bedroom of the elderly King until he was standing right beside the upset, bedridden Danish sovereign.

At his bedside, the intruder bodily blocks Herbert from reaching the castle pull rope as the trespasser menacingly thrusts the dangling rope behind the thick oak headboard, completely out of the vulnerable Ruler's reach.

"Who are you, sir?!" His own dark eyes flair up in anger as the King struggles to collect himself from his bed to at least face this invading rascal on an even keel.

"I'm the ghost of Christmas past."

With that enigmatic, puzzling answer, the rude young man merely snatches in his light-fingered hands the purloined pair of letters from Herbert's shocked grasp. The younger man's threatening eyes furrow mutely as he quickly scans the letters before uttering another word to the astounded King.

His eyes still glued to reading the letters, the handsome rogue would not even allow the King to stand. Herbert's sluggish escape is halted by the seemingly inattentive intruder's strong, deft hand not so gently pushing the King back down to sit on the bed.

"Take a seat, and listen up carefully… Pops." Flynn Rider's golden eyes turn a shade dark as he was practically glaring down at the King of Denmark without one shred of respect, nor fear, nor shame.

"I've gone by the nom de plume Flynn Rider all my sad, sorry orphaned life. But you may be more familiar with my other name. It's Eugene. Eugene _Fitzherbert_." Eugene stresses the secret code name for this particular royal's bastard child he himself never wasted time in trying to decipher, preferring to be fatherless and free after a while.

"Eugene…?" In a hushed whisper, King Herbert may have been sickly and weak, his dilapidated lungs constricted, but his mind was still a sharp as a tack. He instantly and consciously, begins put two and two together as he carefully scrutinizes Eugene's face.

It was an attractive face that had all the trademarks of the distinguished Westergaard chiseled profile, Roman nose, and ruggedly stunning features, with a slight touch of the darker tan skin tone and swarthiness of a Gypsy.

There was something about the intriguing quirk of this young man's mouth displayed in much the same fashion as someone the King of Denmark was quite on intimate terms with once upon a time.

But it was the shape of his exotic amber eyes that expressively opened up a world of insight for Herbert as memories of the Gypsy mistress named Agnès who had got him through some tough, cold years come flooding in. Especially as Herbert studies this dashing young man, who so resembled himself as well in his own vain youth, inaudibly read the two missives with Agnès' trademark smirk undeniably on his face.

"Yep. It's your long lost missing son come to visit his old father at long last. I may not be able to read a lick of French— _though the term 'lick' and my little Missus' French toast breakfast fare go hand-in-hand –_ but from your own good lady's interpretation in her generous letter, I've got the flavor of what that degenerate Rügen did to my birth mother. So her name was _Agnès_ …" Speaking double talk in his inimitable way, Eugene's eyes scan over Queen Louise's letter in his one hand without making eye contact with his audience of the held captive King.

"It's almost gratifying in a strange way to think I actually **_had_** a goodly mother who sounded like she would have loved to have kept me, had she not been killed in the prime of her life by _your_ trusted slimebag thug. Guess even that morbid thought beats the lifelong stigmatism that both my _loving_ parents abandoned me to fend for myself on unwelcoming streets as a babe, any day. More romantic, as background stories go. But I digress." Eugene's mumbling tongue prattles through several stages of realization before making a mental u-turn back to the imminent reason that the talented thief had scaled this forty-foot high wall to get up here.

Eugene pauses to finally look a stunned silent King Herbert directly in the eye.

"Look. I don't really give a hoot in hell if you believe that I'm your son or not. I'm still absorbing it myself. But I found my own way, living by my wits and good looks alone all through these years, to forge myself a life with my own hands. And I now have my own little lady and our new bouncing baby on the way to love me and share her good family with. So I don't need your dysfunctional clan, one iota. Don't worry your regal head, old timer, about 'birthrights' and other such garbage you stuffed royal shirts hold in such high acclaim." Eugene contorts his mouth in disdain at the class distinction he didn't hold in much regard.

"I'm not here with my heart in my hands begging for any fancy-schmancy title, or a single gold-gilt penny or even one blooming kind word of recognition from you. Not even an apology for a past that never was. I'm not asking for one damn blasted thing from you." Venting all of his pent-up years of anger for being left behind and forgotten by this man who could have had the wherewithal to have rerouted Eugene's hard-knock life growing up, in a few terse sentences the plainspoken thief throws all that out in the open air before he lays his case before the King of Denmark's growingly cool stare.

"What I _**am**_ asking for is for you to give your existent son a chance. And it's a damn good chance at a life with the good-looking gal of his own that is now in jeopardy because of that same, sadistic scarface minion of yours again. I know you probably don't want to hear it – but that wily dirtbag Count Rügen is a very bad hombre, believe you me. He's stacked the deck in that court monkey trial going on down there against my new Lillebror – a kid whom I've grown quite fond of in our short time since we met together. By the way, you never asked. It's your youngest son and disowned Prince of this realm, Hans Westergaard." Eugene proudly relates Hans' name, meeting Herbert's eyes his own cautious, yet hopeful ones.

"I got the impression that your rocky relationship with that Kid goes way back, probably for valid reasons on both sides I don't get the full picture of, but I do know that Hans doesn't deserve to be treated like dirt. And he sure as hell doesn't deserve to be tried in a kangaroo court and sentenced be put down like a dog for some trumped up charge of sedition of this kingdom he still loves, even if he's been renounced from it." Eugene moves his smirking head around to gain his ' _father's'_ unfocused attention with his offered sage advice.

"Hey, old man! Are you listening? Just forget all the stuff about me. I don't need the drama. I'm perfectly happy as I am, _without you_. I know I don't mean a damn to you - and believe me you that you don't mean a damn to me. But who I _do_ care about is your real flesh and blood youngest son, Hans. That red-haired Kid means a damn sight more to me, probably more than any of his nasty older kin you indoctrinated against him all his life. Enough to climb up here and swallow my pride to solicit your help for another lost boy you left out in the cold, even though he was living here for a time in your _mighty_ fortress." With a touch of sarcasm, Eugene leans over the King's bed, speaking with all the emotion of brotherly friendship he and Hans had found for one another along this incredible journey.

"And it looks like to me, that there was someone you loved, who died wishing for that Kid to be loved, too." Eugene dramatically and purposefully moves his agile frame to clear the way for King Herbert to again fall under the gaze of the beautiful, wavy haired redhead Queen with the elegant features and warm smile staring back at him from her portrait painting.

"The least you can do is to march down there to make sure her last gift to you has the opportunity to gain the love of somebody who is willing – even if you're not – to forgive and grant him a good life. Just give Hans his chance to get out there in that big world to live a life of his own authoring, and take hold of a love of his own, with or without you in all your finery." With little respect and no fear, Eugene's challenging eyes entreat King Herbert's to find it in his ice shard pierced heart to bend just a little bit, and answer Queen Louise's silent pleas beyond the grave.

Hearing Agnès' echoing words as well replay in his memory from their first meeting where she alone had the boldness to speak to the sorrowful, coldhearted King of Denmark and reach him for just a few brief moments with her warmth, Herbert turns his emotionless head around. He finds himself looking in the similarly amber-gold eyes of that ravishing dark toned beauty now again in the young Gypsy woman's son, who was just as irreverent and brashly honest to dare him to be more than his restrained heart allowed him to be.

"The chance to live and love…?" Repeating Eugene valued words in a low bass voice, with eyes transfixed on this young man's startlingly genuine gaze, King Herbert's own dull blue orbs flicker between a swallowing-his-own pride and pleading Eugene, the letters that impressive young Ice Queen of Norway had bravely delivered to him, and the childish drawing of Hans' Bible verse inspired depiction of Egeskov's unwelcome scene and the Guardian Angel mother looking down from heaven upon her desolate child in the window.

Herbert's gaze finally lands upon Queen Louise's full length portrait hanging on his wall…

And his small chilled heart grew three sizes this day because of those three women, and their touching courage to reach out to him for the sake of those they loved...

"Locate my naval jacket from that wardrobe, young man. And get me down to my throne room... please." Piece by piece, the partly melted, cracked mirror shard in his heart begins to be proliferated by the smallest drops of sunlight and aura of sentimental charity bestowed upon him by the silently influencing feminine touch upon his life.

Eugene's skeptical eyes light up with the unexpected sudden commands of the today turned septuagenarian patriarch of the clan Westergaard.

"Amen! Now that's what like to hear, Pops! Maybe there's hope for you yet!" Eugene impudently comments as he quickly rifles through the tall mahogany wardrobe for a certain prominent uniform jacket.

"Let's get a move on then! Those dozen rotten eggs of yours down there looked mighty anxious to get the trial over with pronto, justice and mercy be damned. Maybe my blushing bride was right to want to stick it out and wish you a ' _Happy Birthday'_." In his enthusiasm of his blunt laying down of the facts before this all powerful king paying dividends, Eugene sprightly tugs and pulls the older gent into his regal clothing like he was a ragdoll more than the most powerful person in this entire country.

"Must you always speak so flippantly, lad?" King Herbert asks with more amusement at his talkative newest addition ' _son'_ than he had felt rise in him for years.

"Yep. Part of the charm. My sweet Princess Rapunzel – _who adores me, by the way, ever since I heroically freed her from being trapped in a hidden tower prison by a maniacal witch_. _But that's another story we'll get to later_ – says that it's a gift and a curse, depending on the mood of the listener." After rushing about the kingly bedchamber to fetch King Herbert's Søværnet black naval cape and tall boots ensemble, Eugene pauses in the balcony window to signal stories below to Maximus with a triumphant locked hand gesture.

Eugene hurriedly then returns to assist the surprisingly pliable, grey long bearded elderly man change into his stately Navy admiral's full uniform.

"You have been wed to a Royal Princess of some kingdom without any imperial credentials of your own to speak of? She sounds like an intriguingly autonomous, quite incisive young lady to have ingratiated her social status for sentiment rather than an effectual political match's posturing." King Herbert remarks, quite surprising himself by how easy he felt speaking to this most unlikely offspring more than all the other boys combined.

"Whew! That's a mouthful! Now I know where Hans gets his snobby good looks and intellectually verbose manners. He's really a great kid, all in all, with a courageous big heart. And balls brave enough to stare a hundred foot tall, poison fanged sea monster in the ugly face and laugh at the danger with his sword blazing. Ha ha! What that kid won't do to capture the heart of his temptingly curvaceous Ice Queen lady love, Elsa." Eugene whistles and rattles on as he puts the final touches on Herbert's lopsided group of metals situated upon the older King's proud chest.

Perhaps it was because this Eugene Fitzherbert was not so daunted by the grandeur of this majestic monarch in which to speak his mind as if he was a peasant more than a King that Herbert found so disarming. Eugene was just as open and direct to the point as he was with any man, and unorthodox in his impertinent treatment towards this unapproachable King who was this most powerful Scandinavian nation's ruler, who had just happened to be his own intimidating sire.

Or maybe it was, in watching Eugene in fluid motion, it almost reminded Herbert of an irreverent young lass with a similarly loose tongue and lust for life who dared approach him - an imposing monarch - and challenged him to live vibrantly with all the verve life had to offer her, no matter how little or great, or long or short her time was here.

Agnès would have loved the child she was prepared to raise on her own had she the chance as an outcast of this cruel world, and that boy seemed to be cut from the same untamed, self-governing mold as she portrayed now.

Though entirely disparate women, Agnès had much the same maternal attitude that Louise shared. Queen Louise had selflessly offered her husband thirteen children and she only wished for his love to someday emerge from his cold heart's frost and share their growing family. Herbert was on the cusp of realizing now that the magic mirror shard obscuring his heart to see only the evil and wicked in this world was dwindling away.

So now, he felt more able than he had all these heartless years in almost half a century to rise to his full six foot three height to stand before his Louise's portrait with a small wispy smile full of pure love and resolved determination.

"Whoa there, Pops!" Eugene offers his broad shoulders' service to aid his stumbling bedridden father's first attempt in a long time to walk on his own across the room and towards its door.

"Methinks you are gonna need a little assistance to get down those treacherous stairs, if I'm to get you down to that courtroom in one piece to show leniency and commute any misbegotten sentences." The cocky, illegitimate son of this haughty, domineering King says with his ever present smirk in place as Eugene lends his physical support to the Danish King to strengthen his uncertain, wobbly pace.

"A lovely young woman recently showed me that mercy means more in this world – and furthermore importantly, _the next_ – than any power or pride or prominence. My eyes are now opening to see that I have needed assistance for a long time, Eugene. A very long time indeed." A heart heavy King Herbert gives one more regretful look from Hans' young picture placed on the bed to his Louise's kind eyes featured in the portrait beyond adorning his wall.

The chill in his heart slows to a cool murmur enough for his weak lungs to breathe the fresh morning air, as King Herbert of the Southern Isles leaves the sanctum of his lonely bedroom on the strength of a young man the devil never wished him to meet.

But there was an Almighty who played a greater role than fateful chance, Who led King Herbert's last and disinherited child to miraculously discover on his own to befriend and bring back the poor, orphaned lost sheep into the fold, as was his mother's prayer, if not his birthright…

* * *

Princess Anna of Arendelle believed she would never tire of having her braids whipping wildly in the cool breeze that she was being propelled through the air amid, free as a bird through the sky on the back of her flying reindeer. She was just as sure that her Uncle Friedrich felt exactly the same from where he was enjoying his ride on his flying white mare not too far behind her and Sven's quickly traveled skyway.

Now as for her Aunt Arianna…

"Are we going a bit too fast?! Oh dear! Friedrich, do hang on to the reins with both hands! Flying reindeer, indeed **!"** Doing her best all this ride to assimilate with her constant, flustered warnings, the safety cautious Queen of Corona was as different from her wildflower younger sister Idun – _and in turn, her gung-ho daughter, Anna_ – as night was from day.

"Looks like the party is already getting started even at this early hour… Let's land by the rear entrance, Sven! Kristoff says that it's the least guarded way into the Castle through there." The spicy girl who thrived on excitement such as this emergency Egeskov Castle infiltration turns to her white knuckled Aunt and enthusiastic Uncle where they were on their pair of Snow Queen airborne horses behind her.

"As visitors, should we not show some decorum and announce our entrance through the front door, dear? It would be a high discourtesy and severe lack of etiquette to simply sneak into the back ingress like common thieves. Oh." The millisecond after prim and proper Queen Arianna stuffily words her last comparative, she winces to take it back.

After all, her one and only son-in-law - a great part of the reason they traveled all this way - seemed to be struggling with giving up his past career entirely. It had apparently landed him in this mess in the first place.

 _Is our_ _Eugene_ _really the illegitimate son of aristocratic King Herbert of the Southern Isles? Does that mean our grandbaby will have some Royal Danish lineage – however unlawful – too?_

The closer her white mare carries her towards the prestigious Egeskov's majestic estate, the more Arianna's errant thoughts hovered towards her beloved daughter Rapunzel's perspective future with the young man so full of surprises.

 _And Anna tells us that that handsome and heroic, youngest son of this realm is infatuated with our Elsa? Oh, Idun! I cannot wait to see you again with all this thrilling news of our children to convey as your little Anna has nonstop chatter endowed to us their entire adventure thus far!_

The tale of Arianna's little sister Idun and her husband Agdar's rescue back to the land of the living had Arianna more heady and enthusiastic than she normally allowed her royal stately self to become.

If that young Prince who helped make it possible needed their assistance now, as difficult Elsa's prospective beau may have been, Arianna would step up to the plate.

Even if it meant soaring through foreign skies at a high altitude all night at incredible, death-defying speeds, she would put aside her stuffy nature and endure it for her beloved sister and her nieces.

"Make swift wing, my love!" And just to have her Friedrich's vigorous lifeforce back at full force brought a shaky smile to her face as his fearless hand reaches across the cool morning breeze to caress his Queen's long flowing hair back in place upon her frazzled head, it was worth every second of this unforeseen crazy adventure for the older Prussian couple.

As the trio of flying creatures touch down on the rear Castle side of the moat surrounding Egeskov Castle, Anna leaps from Sven's back like an expert rodeo girl. She immediately puts a tired reindeer to rest with a pat on his head before she turns to her more cautious slowly arriving aunt and uncle.

"Come on! I'll check in with Kristoff to see that the coast is clear!" The ginger girl closes her eyes to focus her psychic message to her guy.

By now, Anna had explained to her bewildered Aunt and excitable Uncle about her very capable young man's wondrous psychic ability in the best description she could muster. Of course, that left Queen Arianna and King Friedrich a bit confused, with news like the Snow Queen and Wind Whisperer as part of Kristoff's astonishing birthright that bowled them over. But with Anna being perfectly content with its normal justification as if they were ordinary events, what else for the Royal couple to do but just roll with it?

{"Kristly! We're here, at last, my sweet baboo! Which is the quickest way to the courtroom where Hans is on trial?! This, I've **_got_** to see!"} A boisterously curious, with just a touch of vindictiveness, Anna mentally links into her psychic love's network. Kristoff had mentally been alongside her all through her long journey amidst the skies.

The new Wind Whisperer had kept a nearly constant communication line open for her. So Anna had a pretty good idea of what had been happening in the courtroom drama.

That is, up to a point, when Kristoff sagaciously toned down their bond's ability to actually listen in to what Kristoff was witnessing in Elsa's shocking appearance and claim of a surprising engagement to Hans Westergaard.

At least, Kristoff believed he cut off Anna's listening-in in time. Or else he had a feeling there would be hell to pay coming from his Feistypants of a new bride that he was not looking forward to being a part of when she arrives.

{"Anna! You're here… So soon… ummm…(Gulp)…"} It was tough for the fundamentally honest Mister Bjorgman to deceive his girl and still keep it believable with their mental bond so tight and wide-open now the physically closer she got.

But the Wind Whisperer had learned how to put up a few mental roadblocks – and quick – lest his little fireworks go off at the tens, already explosive situation in the throne room turning her dear older sister's wild imagination and even wilder machinations astounding even strangers of the usually self-conscious introverted young Queen.

{"First I need you to get your aunt and uncle upstairs to the King of Denmark's bedchamber. With things going the way they are, I think you may need to be dealing with the only one who could help us now. Eugene's up there trying to convince him to come down."} Kristoff tries to immerse himself in being the grand chess player in a game that he himself had never before played.

"Eugene's upstairs by himself with the King. Okay." Anna gives a low whistle and mental double take at this interesting scenario, her roguish cousin not exactly the most diplomatic choice to entertain a not known as friendly royal ruler.

"Eugene's alone with King Herbert of Denmark?! I do hope he hasn't started an international incident by saying something untoward as he is wont to do!" With a squeeze to her shrugging, smiling husband's secure arm, Arianna confesses her own uncomfortable thoughts at her son-in-law's questionable tact and likeability as she exchanges an unsure grimace with Anna.

{"Got it, Kristly! We're on our way up. Then what?"} Anna sends her mental query out to her partner as she leads the way towards the Castle's large central staircase.

From where he had been physically still seated at the trial just as Elsa was making her dramatic announcement and plea for the defendant, Kristoff was also trying to maneuver and manipulate the new pieces on the chessboard entrants to this game he was beginning to get a handle on.

Seeing the chance of his captor Captain of the Guard Jorgensen's inattention in the courtroom confusion, Kristoff stealthily as a cat slips out the otherwise raucous throne room.

{"And then I need you, Anna, to meet some important incoming people on the roof. I'll send Sven up there to the roof to keep you company until they arrive. Which should be really soon, I hope. I have to go for now, Baby."} Kristoff sends off this urgent last message before almost totally cutting off their connection when things start getting tense in the courtroom that required his full, undivided attention.

"Kristoff says you to should go upstairs to fetch the King and bring him down to the throne room where the trial's taking place. I have to make a quick stop off on the roof." The quizzically enthused bright eyed girl tells her companions in a conspiratorial whisper behind her hand as she pulls Queen Arianna and King Herbert's heads together in a huddle where they were in Egeskov's trophy laden main floor vestibule.

"Eww. This place is still creepy." She scrunches up her icked-out little nose in the face of some poor stuff bear's growling bared sharp teeth face she had clumsily crashed into. "This is the right way." A weirded out Anna asides unaffectedly, speaking as if nothing happened. She trains herself to follow Kristoff's lingering map-like mental signature to lead her relatives through the Castle maze's trophy laden hallways.

 _{"It figures that Hans' home would be full of vicious dead carcasses at every turn, Kristly. Kristly? Oh yeah, that's right, you zoned me out back there. You'll pay for that later, Mister. I need attention.}"_ With an uppity, pouty smirk, unsuspicious Anna snidely murmurs in her mind to her silent love as she tried to focus again on the mental map he had left on her head before departing.

"Anna!" A not so discreet voice interrupts her thought processes where a giddy snowman was waving his arms up and down at the top of the stairs, disturbing the quiet early morning lull.

"Olaf? Why are you here? Where's Rapunzel?" Anna dashes up the rest of Egeskov's deep steps two add a time (only tripping once along her harried way).

"Good morning, Anna! Cousin Rapunzel is down in the throne room watching the trial in the audience balcony… I think…" Olaf scratches his snowy noggin. "It's getting rough to remember where everyone is in the big Castle. Oh! You two must be Rapunzel's parents! It's so nice to meet you at last! Rapunzel doesn't talk much about you. I'm Olaf, Elsa and Anna's friendly snowman. And I like warm hugs." A pleasantly smiling, blindly blunt Olaf turns to King Herbert and Queen Arianna as he spills the beans in his inimitable, clumsy way of introducing himself.

Olaf holds out his branchy arms to an astonished Friedrich and Arianna as he awaits the arrival of the two royals where he was on the second floor landing of the staircase.

"Oh, ho, ho. You are funny little fellow, aren't you, friend Olaf? I have heard about you from our young niece, Anna. Elsa must be very gifted to have created you. Just look at the self replenishing indoor snow cloud, my Flower!" King Friedrich of Prussia had a childlike innocence about him, even despite his sixty-five years of age, to marvel at such a wonderment as a living, breathing talking snowman as he gives Olaf a big bear hug just as requested.

"Friedrich. Don't get too close. A chill like that may exacerbate your lumbago." Prim and proper Queen Arianna wasn't all that certain about magical creatures made of snow and her Friedrich's fragile heart's ability to handle all the excitement.

 _But what was a talking and walking snowman compared to a mystical flying horse? Idun has married into such an intriguing family…_ Arianna can recall with a joy more than tears now that she knew they lived, her little sister's fateful wedding to that dashing crown Prince Agdar and all of the frozen intrigue and adventure that encompass their destiny of love together.

 _But my flutterbudget Idun would not have had it any other way_.

"I'll be just fine, my love. Never felt better! Olaf?" King Friedrich's smiling eyes were full of purpose. "Do you know which room belongs to His Majesty, the King, little snowman? We must see him right away and speak on a matter of utmost urgency." The King of Prussia, as a majestic ruler and head of the government of his own nation as well himself, understood the ultimate decisive power that came with sitting on the throne in judicial matters concerning his people before any court.

Though he remembered King Herbert to be a cold, proud, pigheaded and somewhat heartless ruler from past European conferences and international meetings in the past, the good men in Friedrich refused to believe that even such a harsh monarch of the southern Isles as Herbert would not harden his heart and sentence his own son to execution on such falsified petty grounds.

 _Or would he?_

King Friedrich was not 100% sure either way, after hearing many reports over the years of that particular kingdom's conquests and cruelty to those attributable in its quest for glory and power along the way. Perhaps Herbert was unaware of the direction his many male children had taken his kingdom, and kindhearted Friedrich wished to give his equal the benefit of the doubt.

"I don't know for sure, because I've never met the King of Denmark. But, if it helps, my friend Lukas heard somebody coming down the hall before from the next floor above and went to go investigate to see if someone needed help. I was about to follow him when I saw you guys coming! And here I am!" Noisy Olaf was an effusive snowman who did not understand the meaning of keeping quiet most of the time.

"Oh! There is Lukas! He found Cousin Eugene carting around some old guy we never met before. Probably a Santa Claus impersonator rejected for his frightening face. Ooh-ooh. Just the look of him gives me the shivers." Literally quivering as he gapes at the sight of Eugene's new companion, Olaf talks out the side of his wide mouth towards Fritz and Arianna. The snowman points to where the plump little boy was trying to help Eugene struggle down the long fight the stairs from the second floor to the first with an older man leaning heavily on his muscular shoulder for support.

"Olaf! Wait! That's not just any old guy! Kristoff said Eugene was with –" Anna looks back down the hall to warn her snowfriend just who he might be messing with.

She shakes her head and slaps her hand over her own mouth to signal to Olaf's big mouth the silly snowman's ill mannered faux pas. Olaf responds by hushing with both branches zipping up his toothy grin, giving a branchy thumbs-up that promised he would behave.

"King Herbert of the Southern Isles." King Friedrich fills in the blanks of his wandering niece's dangling sentence, as his wife respectfully lowers her eyes abruptly bowing down before the King of Denmark, dragging a gaping mouthed Anna to curtsey down with her.

The King of Corona takes several steps in front of Olaf to greet the Danish monarch with a nod. Though they had not seen one another in many years, Friedrich immediately recognized Herbert for his chiseled jaw good looks, despite the thick grey beards that they both wore now in their declining years.

"Why, Herbert! I heard you were bedridden and near death! But you're looking fine now! Just fine!" The kindhearted King of Prussia offers his benevolent greetings as he moves in towards the central staircase landing.

"I have heard the same reports of you, Friedrich. But it appears that the reports of our deaths have been widely exaggerated. Though most probably not unwelcome in most circles, in my case…" King Herbert concludes in a bit of the morose mood his chilled heart often sank into.

Flynn Rider frowns at the dour man leaning against his arm, not wanting for the older gent to lose any positive drive, just yet.

"Fritz! Ari! Did the Pixie corrupt you into storming castles now, too? Hey! Where'd she go?! Here one minute, gone the next. Crazy kid. Gotta admit, I didn't see this one coming." Trying to be upbeat, Eugene gregariously addresses his un-depressing parents-in-law as if it was just a normal occurrence for him to be dragging this powerful King down the stairs on his arm, like an old drinking buddy.

"Eugene! What are you doing here?!" Embarrassed beyond sensibilities, Queen Arianna whispers in exasperation to her son-in-law, in total confusion to his motives in being not only present in this Royal house, but for what possible reason there could be for physically dragging the aged ruler of Denmark through his own Castle halls?

"Bringing the birthday boy down to an early morning party that he can't miss—otherwise known as a court full of jesters. You're looking especially lovely, all wind blown and reindeer rosy, Ari. Good to see you no longer knocking on death's door, too, Fritz. Kinda missed having you old timers around every now and then in slow moments. How's it going down in Corona?" Eugene continues to steady the Danish patriarch down the stairs, with an irreverent two fingered salute and winsome smirk directed at his in-laws.

"Why don't you to tag along to see the fireworks, folks? I'm sure my Pops here won't mind a few extra party crashers to join in on the fun, will you?" Eugene chortles in King Herbert's ear.

"It's been a long time, King Friedrich. I did not realize you and your good lady were attending the ridiculous party my children have informed me I would be the main attraction of later today." King Herbert answers from above where Eugene was helping him down the stairs, his lungs surprisingly clearer for long sentences without interruption.

"I'm not an invalid! Leave me be, boy! I mean… rather… thank…you for your assistance thus far in traversing the stairwell, Eugene, but I believe I can make it on my own the remainder of the way to my own throne room." The older man who had been conditioned to heartlessly snap at his children for years recalls now, as the frosty mists were parting from his memory, the tenderness from his dear wife as his slowly opening heart was trying for her to be more human than monster.

"Fine! I'm not stopping you, old man." With a cynical murmur, Eugene puts his hands up in the air dismissively.

The humiliated man in King Herbert stubbornly yanks himself away from Eugene's helpful grasp as Herbert Westergaard was too proud to allow himself to ever give the appearance of weakness before another sovereign ruler. He would stand on his own two feet and walk in his own throne room under his own power even if it killed him.

Which he just might have done, but for puddles of ice water that Elsa had unwittingly left trails of earlier in her upset, and had made the marbleized floors of Egeskov Castle' ground level slippery. Herbert's distracted attention looking at Olaf may have made him a bit careless and disoriented as King Herbert tries to stand straight and erect in his Admiral's naval uniform.

In all his pomp and circumstance, the imperial King begins to slip and slide in his tall black boots across the recently polished, marbleized main floor.

"I'll save him!" Overly optimistic Olaf trips and stumbles his way across the floor towards King Herbert as King Friedrich and Queen Arianna move towards the falling man.

Even a crossed arm, petulant Eugene's lunge to catch the old timer just wouldn't make it time.

 _"Like reindeer in the sky! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!"_

"Lukas!" Anna's energetic body comes sprinting from out of nowhere and springs into action, accompanied by the childish speed inspiring song as the girl who would never grow up rushes forward from one side, counting on the little boy she had befriended, to counterbalance the wobbly Danish King.

With a small child clinging to his legs and an in-flight young girl wrapped tightly around his torso in the most intimate embrace Herbert had felt in many lost years, the King feels a strange surge of electricity course through him. A splash of healing again dislodges and melts yet another small chunk of the ice mirror shard wedged in his heart.

King Herbert's disoriented eyes open to see sunflower and ribbons, amid ginger braided hair that must've belonged to the girl clutching his chest with vigor. Peeking up at him from somewhere below with a pair of startlingly azure blue eyes, a small brown haired boy who reminded the elderly father of another young child who had stared at that him like that, in such wonder, many years ago, when his newly penetrated cold heart chose to ignore his fourth son's queries entirely.

But Herbert's clouded soul towards little Ivers and every son thereafter never could explain what love was anymore to any of his offspring.

"Thank you, child… Lukas, is it? What are you doing here, roaming in my castle so freely?" Herbert gruffly inquires of the scroungy clothed, obviously poor boy helping prop the unstable monarch up from the waist down like a small human crutch.

"Yes sir, Lukas Rigsborg, from Fattigskole Mission School. I'm visiting my mother, who's a ladies' maid here, your Majesty." Lukas proudly imparts with all the respectful deference and honest grace, which old school Herbert demanded of children.

"Well, it is fortunate you were here, for whatever reason. You do have your King's gratitude." Once upon a time, in his heartlessness, if given the choice, Herbert would rather have sent such a beggar's child to a workhouse to decrease the surplus population. But remembering Louise's warmth to small children more clearly now than he had in a long time, his heart was already enlarged enough to let a small light of compassion shine down on a hopeful child as another piece of the mirror melts away…

Lukas giggles gleefully at the unexpected recognition as Olaf skids up to give his new little buddy a high five.

Although, in Olaf's branchy case, it was actually a high four.

"And as for you, songful young lady. What do you mean by squeezing the breath from my already weak lungs? What reason are you here in my kingdom?" Herbert asks, looking down at the orangey young woman doing her best to extricate herself from their tangled embrace.

"Oh,…you mean me?… Umm…This is awkward… Not you… Me…You're…you! Yeesh! I've gotta go! Bye!" In her dithering excitement of the moment, Anna pulls away from inelegantly hugging Hans' father. She was not sure if the jig was up on her true identity, or if she was not supposed to spill the secret yet and blow her and Kristoff's cover as hired celebration party singers.

After all, Kristoff was no longer in her mind to discuss it with her. Besides, Anna was in hurry with her own mission.

"Pixie. I just call her 'Pixie '. It pretty much sums it all for her." Eugene drolly saunters up to replace his steady shoulder with Anna's hastily departed spinning orange top as they all watch her dash up the stairs at record-breaking pace.

"Well then. King Friedrich, Queen Arianna…Prince…Eugene. Lukas and Olaf. Shall we enter my throne room to see what my many sons have wrought? I believe there is an enlightening young woman in there to whom I owe an apology." With words of soft admittance, King Herbert recalls a bold and beautiful icy maiden's life-changing visit to his kingdom. The letters she had brought to him of those dear, and sadly no longer near, were tucked safely against his heart that was warming slowly step-by-step.

King Herbert of Denmark motions for his illegitimate, yet still a near blood relation son Eugene to open the large double doors that led into the throne room to allow its King entrance…

What horror – and what surprise - his newly opened eyes see taking place there inside stirs his reawakened heart to ache with so many emotions Herbert of Egeskov had not remotely felt in an exceedingly long time…

* * *

 ** _Inside Egeskov Throne Room, moments ago…_**

"Hans! Behind you!" From her bird's eye view from tens of feet above in the court balcony above, Princess Rapunzel had keenly spied that dastardly Count Rügen's sneak attack quite un-chivalrously inflicting his own demented judgment upon Hans' vulnerable, wide-open back.

All in a whirlwind, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles vaguely hears Elsa's cousin's melodic voice echoing lightly through the vast throne room, feels the whooshing vacuum of the double doors be pushed open from somewhere behind. His curious gaze travels along with everyone else in the courtroom instantly turning back to see who was interrupting these most engaging, unanticipated proceedings, just when the winds of justice appeared to be blowing favorably to his defendant, thanks to Queen Elsa of Arendelle.

In a single, terrible glance, Hans could sense Count Rügen's vengeful dark shadow looming so close behind him with that murderous evil intent in his eyes.

 _Snowflake, forgive me for leaving so soon…but, in the end, it's better this way…_

Hans' secret thoughts of his lifelong hope for love perhaps realized on one level of his heart's consciousness are shattered at the awareness of impending doom.

With the wicked man's signature fencing kill technique called the ' _Zornhau'_ about to be implemented, Rügen's sword was seconds away from wrathfully striking his arch nemesis 'Devil Boy' right here in the throne room of his father, even before so many witnesses.

The angry rancorous acrimony built for decades in this venomous man all now culminated in the glint of the steel blade gleaming in the early morning light. The pure malice in Rügen's eyes told an anxious Hans' rapid mind that this was the end.

With the decision of this unforgiving sword impalement split seconds away, there was no time left for an unarmed Hans to defend himself or even react to the expert's deathly blow. There was not even time to say goodbye to the love of his life who had given him hope, even though he knew he deserved it not.

" **Elsa!** _Huff-huff!_ **Save HANS!"** A breathless Rapunzel calls out again, more loudly this time, to alert her powerful cousin down below. But a disoriented Elsa had been in a serious conversation with Prince Kaleb concerning the court case of Aged P. She was not in a position to do much beyond look in terror back towards her new 'fiancé' in frozen fear.

Hans' viridescent green eyes fly back to meet Elsa's confused exotic ones across the room in his last moment here on earth, trying to convey through his eyes all he felt in one last look, one last gaze, wanting it to be spent with the only one he ever loved…

 ** _SLIICCCEEE!_**

As Hans braces himself to stand straight and erect and upright as a man should even at the threat of a killing blow about to vanquish him, the thirteenth unlucky Prince of the Southern Isles shuts his eyes in resignation at the close of a flawed life full of mistakes and empty dreams, as well as the deep love he finally and fully acknowledged he held for Elsa, that gave him some final degree of joy.

Hans could only pray with his last breath that God, forgiving and merciful, would protect his Elsa, to keep her safe with a blessed life filled with love—even one Hans could not ever be a part of… Hans did, more than anything, want for Elsa to be happy…even if it killed him to let her go…

The temperature of the throne room drops sharply as Elsa's ice magic cannot focus for the chilling fear of Rügen's obscured target, so directly behind Hans' tall form that she could not be certain to lock on to without fear of haphazardly icing the entire court, as well as the princely Westergaard brothers too nearby.

"Hans!" Ice blasting on the fly, Elsa trips over her self in her high heels as she dashes back towards her love, trying desperately to get a clearer vantage point at her target as her cryokinetics form a jagged spike of ice in her hand. The Ice Queen's pinpointed ice expelled from her hand is expertly repelled by evil Rügen's tempered steel sword at just the perfect angle.

Her hasty, powerful blast instead deflects off the quickly twisted steel, devilishly ideal to target freeze Captains Schmidt and Jorgensen's legs, causing them to be pinned to the marbleized floors instead.

"Oh! Witchcraft!" Several awed spectators gasp in hushed shock at Elsa's open display of cryo-prowess.

But no fear or prejudice would stop her now. Elsa had her man to save.

"You have just made yourself my new target, Ice Witch!" But before anyone could make another move in the stunned courtroom, a malignant Rügen seizes this moment to carry out his wrathful strike with full intention of impaling Prince Hans straight through his vital pulmonary region so no amount of medicine or healing care would have opportunity to revive the wretch in time.

Then he would throw his precise sword at the blonde enchantress, Queen of Norway or no, so she too would fall much to the same fate soon thereafter. No one could fault Count Rügen for defending their kingdom from such an abhorrent menacing threat, as she made the first attack on him before all the audience to see.

"Elsa, stay back!" With Elsa's ice diversion giving him a few extra seconds to react, weaponless Hans Westergaard selflessly turns to warn his lady love, his arms stretched out to block sinister Count Rügen from avenging his Arendelle angel next with an adept sword throw, as Hans knew that the implacable man would attempt to counter.

Hans frantically sees Elsa, moving towards him even if he warned her off, and knew what he had to do.

"Hans!" Elsa squeaks out in surprise. For, just as she arrived at his side, her noble Prince grasps ands thrusts her body - as gently as the tense moment dictated – to spin the dizzied young woman behind his back towards the throne again, banking that the two older brothers behind him near the throne, Kaleb and Anders would protect the Queen, whether they had umbrage against him or not.

Even though he personally knew her great capabilities, Hans still treated the Ice Queen as if she were a fragile snow flower, a vulnerable, delicate damsel in distress for him to protect.

Elsa may have been slighted as an independent Queen of her own means and powerful ruler of her own nation, but secretly, in the deepest reaches of her mind, she was somehow pleased to have him protect and fawn over her, care for her enough to place himself in danger in her stead, as Prince Hans had proven time and time again—just for her. Elsa never before in her solitary life, thought it possible for someone beyond her immediate family to love and hold her in such high regard.

It took her breath away.

"Storbror! Please keep her safe, and bring my Queen home, no matter what happens to me! I beg of you!" Hans' final thoughts were all for her, as Prince Anders acquiesces to Hans' plea and takes hold of a struggling Elsa. The second-in-line Prince pulls the blonde woman to the shelter of the throne beside Crown Prince Kaleb who had the King's sceptre extended in their defense.

"Farewell and God keep you, my Snowflake. ' _But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy.' (Titus 3:5)_

With the poignant Bible verse on his lips, Hans weakly smiles in gratitude over to his eldest brothers, giving Elsa a lasting, adoring gaze. Even though he knew this was probably the end of the road for him, he could face death in the assurance of the Lord that his Snowflake would be safe.

"Enough of this sentimental nonsense!"

Everyone gasps as the devil calling himself Count Rügen, like lightning, pursues Hans relentlessly to continue his vehement, vindictive strike.

Suddenly, hot blood spews down the back of Hans' dark navy blue tunic to saturate his Sjoforsvaret Naval Kommander's uniform jacket that his Elsa, as leader of her Naval forces, had bestowed upon him, along with her trust, what seemed a lifetime ago now…

 **"NOO! HANS!"** Elsa's coloratura soprano scream fills the courtroom in her frozen fear, as the cold chill in the throne room falls just as dramatically as her heart freezes to see her unarmed love be so cruelly struck down from behind.

But there was someone else in this courtroom who did not enter it unarmed.

 ** _CLANG!_**

In the next moment, a distracted Hans feels another presence replace the sneering hateful one behind him as he realizes that the hot blood splattered across his back, was not his own.

It was Count Rügen's splurting open right arm, all the way down its length, that was exuding a great amount of bodily fluid all over Hans' back. Someone had slyly assaulted the stealthy assailant from behind before Rügen could strike Hans.

"Step away from my Lillebror, _Master_ Rügen! I may never have been your prize student, but I seriously do not recall ' _stabbing an unarmed man in the back'_ as good form in your 'Gentleman's precious Rules of Fencing Engagement'! Unfortunately for you, I have never been a gentleman who plays by the rules. Engarde, Sir!" Kommander senior grade Prince Didrik of the _Søværnet_ Danish Navy brushes back his loose bangs to reveal his darkly sunken double black-eyes with no humiliation now, for his eyes were far too full of resilience to care of his visage.

To a stunned crowd's gasping shock, sixth in line Prince Didrik of the Southern Isles had somehow surprisingly leapt up from his jurist's box seat in an agile, well played intercept that Count Rügen may have himself taught the undisciplined student.

As a youth, Prince Didrik rarely paid any attention to fencing lessons, his concentration most often elsewhere in the sport of skirt-chasing all in the feminine variety. But nonetheless, closest to the action where angels fear to tread now, Didrik had drawn his own sharpened saber blade, always present in the sheath at his side for that dangerous and debonair look, but never used, to stop Rügen's sinister attack.

Hans gazes back in utter wonder at the life-saving, heroic act of the one taunting big brother whom Hans always remembered laughing down at him as a child with some biting, saucy remark or another about the clan's detestable, unwanted ' _Red Squirrel'_.

Although the darkly handsome and dapper ladies man had never thought himself much of swordsman, nor a noble hero, Prince Didrik had been moved by Queen Elsa's passionate words in his younger brother Hans' defense. And Hans had spoken demonstrative words of her before in their encounter early this morning, equally as emotively touching.

Maybe it was the pure, true love sentiment found in this beauteous Elsa of Arendelle's eyes. Or maybe it was the incredible courage it took for Hans, as an outcast pariah of his own nation, to be bold enough to dare challenge the entire depraved system.

From his vengeful former teacher to the vindictive dozen angry big brothers and callous King and father, whom the former stirred the flames of hatred thereof all these years, Hans took them all on. But he did it all for the love of his Queen Elsa of Arendelle.

 _Behind every good man is a good woman…_

Through their obvious, evident devotion for one another, something inspiring rose up inside of Didrik to be a good older brother to stand up for his younger sibling when the chips were down, and a good man to stand up for what was right—just for once in his immoral, loose life.

"You're not even a class B swordsman, you confounded, disinterested swine!" The ferally aggravated sword master becries this always lackadaisical and recalcitrant fencing student that he believed least likely to succeed at having a deft sword arm.

To have flippant dandy fop Prince Didrik of all of Rügen's trained boys of Egeskov be the one almost medically concise in slicing their experienced swordsman Count's brachial artery down to the radial of his arms and make Rügen instantly drop his weapon was maddeningly insulting to say the least. Blood splurted everywhere from the enraged man's mutilated arm that would most likely never pick up a sword again the same way, for the injury.

"You blasted lascivious fool! You have been nothing but a worthless sponge, diminishing your father's good name with your sordid behavior ever since you never graduated puberty! I have stood by and watched your embarrassment as an undeserving son of this Royal house, you debased, whoreson varlet." Count Rügen maliciously spits out as he bandages his own profusely blood-let arm defiantly, using his teeth to knot some shredded cloth high on his bicep's split open artery to staunch the wound.

The Master, for once in his dastardly life, was so utterly sideswiped by such an amateur of Didrik's flaky character being the one to afflict him, that he shouts expletives that some of the ladies in the upper gallery balcony were aghast to hear.

The bloody scene of Rügen's slashed open arm was horrifying nearly all of those visitors and wives of the princes leaning over the balcony ledge who did not already fall back in their seats lightheaded at the sight of the fresh blood.

"That's my valiente man! Maravillosa (Wonderful)!" Though there was one Princess wife who was beyond impressed at Didrik's gallant act more than horrified at the violence of it all, even if she was the one responsible for his second black-eye earlier this morning.

Clutching her overexcited chest for support, Spanish Princess Antoinetta leans with unconcealed renewed admiration over the balcony railing alongside rubbernecker Gloria Lujza and one more undisclosed Princess Royal who had been silently watching as she skulked in the throne room's hidden wings.

"Why do you choose this satanic child over me, Didrik?!" Count Rügen demands of the man with the dark handlebar mustache who never showed any affection for the last offspring of the King and Queen.

"Maybe because, in the end, you are just a mere servant. And he is still our little brother."

Inspired at Didrik's bold lead as they exchange glances, many of the other Westergaard brothers rise to their feet and take several defensive stances to join Didrik to guard around Hans. Each of those who had a weapon of one kind or another, from bastardeaux daggers to punctilla swords to sheath knives and small dirks with pommels, display it and form a battle squadron, defensive posture surrounding their wide-eyed, astonished youngest sibling.

Rügen's apostates of well-trained, black-cloaked lackeys, at a growled signal from the man in his livid madness and fury, stream in through the secret entrance pillars to rush at the group of royal brothers. These hand-picked, chosen men held their loyalty pledge to Rügen worth more to than any deferment to the princes of this kingdom.

"These faceless, hooded goons always loitering about our kingdom want a throw down!? Let's show them what the Southern Isles are made of, boys! Bring it!" At aggressive Peiter's rallying call, as even roused Rune begrudgingly joins the younger siblings Berte, Franz, and Ruddi start forcing the miscreants back.

Soon, the older brothers Ivers, Mattias and Lars, his spectacles removed to his pocket, join the fray until they all had Didrik's chivalrous back.

"Hans! Catch!" Fellow Navy man, Prince Jurgen offers his own broad naval sword to his littlest brother, tossing it by the hilt through the air towards Hans before joining the fray. He himself chose to engage in the punching matches against Rügen's men rather than indulge in the art of swordplay.

Ten of Hans' brothers were pitching in now for a rollicking fight with multiple vile minions. All stand in defense of Hans' vulnerable target from Count Rügen's still viciously ambidextrous, left handed sword that the formerly six anger polydactyl man was famous for.

"Count Rügen! Please cease this madness! Justice demands that these matters be decided by civilized courts!" Prince Kaleb tries to gain order in his royal court, losing total control of the room to sword and dagger fighter fisticuffs as he does his best to bring a sense of order to his father's hallowed throne room. Never mind trying to return to argue the petty trial they had been squabbling over banalities at this only ungodly hour of the morning.

But as usual, Kaleb felt useless. No one was listening to him around the cacophony of the alarmed crowd of onlookers and noisy fighting offenders.

As Rügen's infantry of sycophants converge upon the courtroom from every shadowy angle, the Southern Isles princes all show their combat mettle. Whether by sword or fist for whatever weapon was at hand, the entire clan was up with each holding their own against seemingly endless stream of thugs.

"Oy! You got any popcorn? You should sell tickets for this show! I wager it'd make a lot of money for your kingdom! And morale would be through the roof! I'd vote for Team Egeskov for all your cunning and burly athletes, had I not been a proud Corona Lanterns fan." Aged P was wide awake now as he sits pretty in the witness box on the sidelines and comments to captive audience Captains Schmidt and Jorgensen about the sports competition taking place before their eyes.

The pair of guardsmen could do nothing but roll their eyes and frozen britches stuck stagnant in place watch the raucous, rousing scene from where their thankfully thick-booted feet were affixed to the ground.

 ** _CLANG! CLASH! CLING!_**

With Jürgen's naval broadsword at his gifted command, Hans defends himself from the attacking villain's sword, blow by skillful blow.

 ** _CLANG! CLASH!_**

But after Hans' deft blade knocks Count Rügen's away, the Master's animalistic malice seemed to have no bounds. Rügen was seeing red by now, knowing this was the end game and it drives him to lash out with his bare hands around the Devil Boy's neck in a stranglehold his once polydactyl hand was infamous for.

After a vicious knee kick to Hans still knitting together wounded gut to incapacitate him, doubling him over, Rügen wraps his disfigured left hand around Hans' unprotected neck.

Unprotected, save for the swift ice shield casing that a quick thinking Elsa - _who had 'convinced' Prince Anders to let her go with a douse of chilly ice to his lower regions -_ was fastidiously forming around every sinewy line and tendon around Hans' slim and trim body she was secretly a well studied new student of.

"Elsa! _Choke_! He's dangerous! _Cough_! Get back! _Choke_! Please! Never mind me! _Sputter cough!"_

Hans altruistically pleas to the woman he loved as his slender, yet muscular form resists against Rügen's ferocious attack as best he could.

"No! I will never abandon you, Hans! Leave him alone, you monster!" As she said the words, all at once Elsa recalls that first special moment that had passed between the couple when Prince Hans was the only one to even try to reach out to her in her terror, with understanding when her powers were first developing and out of control.

 _'Don't be the monster they fear you are!'_

Prince Hans brought her back to sanity and saved her soul then, with his beautiful voice piercing through her fear-ridden mind and giving her control. So Elsa, now that she was in full command of her gifts, would never give up on saving Hans.

"Please! **JUST** **LEAVE HIM ALONE**!" The icy hackles that rise quite artistically and stylishly tasteful in a high neck Elizabethan ruff collar as royal queens of old, shoot up in Elsa's fervent anger to protect her love. Her icy palms frostbite over Count Rügen's single gnarled hand's grip around Hans' neck, as an iridescent, glassy ice armored Elsa moves in closer to physically pull Hans away from the iniquitous man's vicious grasp.

But she was in full control of her powers this time.

Elsa's powers were about to unleash at the evil attacker at full force, once her redheaded Prince's garroted neck had breath again and she was assured that he wouldn't be harmed by her cryokinetic assault.

But the evil villain ignores the frostbiting and continues his malignant stranglehold, undeterred by the extreme pain the raw nerves in his now frost destroyed left hand endured.

"It is fitting you should go this way, Devil Boy. For this is the hand that seeks revenge on you most of all you stole!" Fueled by pure hatred, Rügen ignores Elsa's frenetic ice even though it was beyond burning his already scarred hand that was relentless in its stranglehold on Hans.

"Count Rügen! Stop these wicked manipulations! Call off your men!" Prince Kaleb takes a verbal stand against his lifelong instructor as his brother Prince Anders had, too drawn a naval sword and had taken several steps forward into the battle scene until he was standing directly beside Elsa.

"You cease this madness now, Count Rügen, or we'll have to take control of the floor." The politician was fully ready to take full responsibility for plunging his sword into Rügen's uncompromising heart.

"Why would you boys betray **me** , your lifelong Master, for this unworthy murderer of your sainted mother?" Rügen cries out to the disloyal bunch of hooligans he believed he raised to be real men without the encumbrance of compassionately bleeding hearts.

But none of their dozen voices were to answer their Master's angered question. That came from another, equally as vexed, who just entered the courtroom.

" **COUNT RüGEN! LEAVE MY SON ALONE!"** A deep bass bellows like thunder throughout Egeskov's throne room that every ear listening pricks up and stops still in his place at the very resonance of.

Especially Count Rügen, whom Elsa had nearly frozen in place by now in his off moment of inattention where Hans soon overpowers his relentless deformed hand with Elsa's help to push away.

"And you are thoroughly wrong, Rügen! This boy's mother was not murdered. She left this world giving her life for love…" His once pierced heart strengthens as the mirror shard of good and evil is nearly dissolved upon witnessing his sons, en masse, all rally around their outcast little brother in his darkest hour, when he needed them most.

 _As brothers should watch out for one another… Just as my Louise would have wished you to…_

King Herbert may not have been able to walk on his own, but he was standing tall even as he leans against Eugene's shoulder for support to stride through the chaotic throne room.

"Your Majesty! Step away from that two bit thief! He's already been thrown out of this court once on an immunity free pass! Don't make me do it again! I won't be so gentle this time!" Tough as nails Haeran trained Captain Jorgensen had sworn his pledge to serve his King, and that kept his duty to his sovereign first and foremost priority in his strict mind.

The gruff soldier finally wrestles his feet out of his boots, unbuttoning to shimmy out of his ice cold frozen pants to cross the room and physically remove Eugene from his monarch's presence and take his place in propping the weak legged King up.

"King Herbert! Prince Eugene is a reformed upstanding citizen of my husband's nation of Corona, not to mention my daughter's loyal, worthy consort, as well as a guest in your kingdom. He should be respectfully treated as such." Queen Arianna surprisingly pipes up here on Eugene's wide-eyed behalf.

"Uh…What she said." Not so verbosely spontaneous himself, King Friedrich gives his total agreement to his bossy wife's decisive statement, landing his most imposing glare upon Captain Jorgensen. The berated man looks from the obviously royal couple of Corona to his own King and guiltily removes his hands from Eugene at King Herbert's terse nod.

"Leave me to Prince Eugene, Captain. This young man is under my personal protection in this kingdom herewith, and has free rein to come and go and visit wherever and whenever he pleases. He, and his Prussian family and friends, as our close allies, are to be treated as kin." King Herbert announces in undisclosed, heartfelt terms for all his sons and subjects to hear, as he exchanges a look with King Friedrich over Eugene's enlightened head.

This was the Danish monarch's subtle way of giving this illegitimate son the tiniest shred of recognition without admitting it.

"Son. Bring me to your… Lillebror." With a significant look passing between the misbegotten son and his accepting father in some semblance of a bond forming between them, King Herbert murmurs for only Eugene's spurious ears to hear this time.

The tanned, toned and dark-haired thief who helped a King see the light in more ways than one this day, Eugene Fitzherbert, leads King Herbert through the magnificent melee that the blood-soaked brawl left Egeskov's Royal throne room in.

"You got it, Pops. Put your jaw back in its socket and get a decent pair of pants suitable for a royal audience, before the birthday party, pal." Eugene can't help but toss a quietly curved snide barb at the thermal underwear sporting Captain Jorgensen.

Eugene smirks saucily at the astonished man who may have overheard some of the classified material passing between his King and this upstart Prince of thieves. But of course, as a trained loyal Haeran officer, Captain Jorgensen would say nothing to anyone, and take the secret of King Herbert's baseborn child to his grave.

After he exchanges a grateful glance with Fritz and Arianna for their heartfelt defense, Eugene's own chest puffs up with a sensation he never thought he would experience – _nor desire_ – as he marginally considers how King Herbert had called him 'Son' for the first time.

Okay, it was under the older man's breath and definitely unofficial – but it was a big step for this orphan boy who grew up believing that he belonged to no one and no one would ever want to claim him.

"King Herbert! Your Majesty! If I may gain your ear to explain my side of the truth? This criminal, disowned son of yours, we all know to be unworthy of your proud Westergaard name! He is a traitor who has been spreading lies and performed actions of duplicitous sedition to even corrupt your other good and loyal sons to turn their back on their own kingdom! As I told you all these years, he is indubitably the devil's offspring! And ever since, he has proven that point tenfold, as I have always proclaimed." Rügen argues, giving Hans a dreadful sneer of disdain.

"Just look how he has cursed me with this sorceress' stinging hold! Have the witch free me so I can protect you and your kingdom from his wickedness as I have always done, dear Cousin Herbert." Only frozen with an ice layer just thick enough to keep him incapacitated from the neck down, a shivering Count Rügen was still able to spout cries of derision amongst his cunning wheedling attempt to yet again manipulate the King.

"With all your words, Humperdinck, you are correct on one thing, to be sure." After several seconds of watching Rügen's teeth chatter in his icy captivity that Herbert had to give the mysterious young Queen credit for creative bravery, King Herbert meets a hopeful Elsa's eyes to finally land on Hans' almost terrified to be under his father's disapproving eyes gaze.

"As is his birthright, Prince Hans is my son. **You** are the true purveyor of malicious wickedness who has been clouding my cold, unforgiving heart and that of my other sons against this mentally abused, beaten down child for far too many years." King Herbert surprises everyone, Hans most of all, with his sudden solicitous tone in relation with the one son despised since his birth.

"Danish laws of justice demands immediate death for your multitude of crimes against the crown I have just come to realize. For years I was too blind to see your grasping hand around my dominion, so caught up with my own overbearing fallacies and nation conquering aspirations was I. But the indoctrination of the wrong mindset of morals and slanted thinking you have instilled upon my sons, every last one of them since I gave you free rein over their upbringing is inexcusable." Shaking his distressed head, King Herbert stares down at Count Rügen's stagnant, scarred face. For the first time, without the impediment of the mirror shard coating his consciousness with cold ambition, Herbert could see the true face of evil looking back at him.

"I see now that a great deal of your childhoods were lost to my cold attitude after your dear mother's death, my sons. Can any of you boys – no, my handsome, strapping men now – ever forgive an old man who has lived a life full of regrets?" The penitent King, clutching his Louise's letter from the heart over his untainted one inside his naval jacket pocket, swallows his pride to beg for the forgiveness of his children, as the twelve of them gather around their patriarch.

"Father? Are you feeling all right? Why have you come down here? Everything will soon be under control. You needn't have bothered." Though he respectfully keeps his distance, accustomed to being browbeaten and numbed by the responsibility vested in him, yet never bestowed with loving pride, as eldest, Prince Kaleb speaks up to his domineering parent, defending his rule.

Guilty of being caught unprepared, Kaleb glances to Anders, who shrugs with a raised brow smirk. The dozen of them scattered about the messy throne room all begin to converge around draw closer in curiosity.

The culpable, worrisome-by-nature Crown Prince immediately vacates the throne of his father in awestruck surprise that his aged parent had not only come downstairs on his own accord as he had not in years, but King Herbert had actually spoken kind words to his sons. A feat that Kaleb believed was only a distant memory's chimera.

"A brave young woman had the intelligence, fortitude and heart to invite a King down from his high horse to finally witness the truth. And a brash young man who dared speak about second chances for another's sake, though none were ever offered him, have altered the chill of my heart and soul that refused to see that light before." King Herbert rubs his beard as he smirks over it at Eugene.

"And that same brilliant young lady recently reminded me that the measure of mercy is more rewarding than any conquer's legend." The Danish King turns his attention now to the shy young woman who overcame her own misgivings out of her love for another. The humbled King affords Elsa a courteous nod of his regal head.

"My Louise…" Herbert was just as certain that she must be up there with her sparkling green eyes watching with proud interest that you boys had just defended her last, but no, _not least_ , child." King Herbert's steely blue eyes meaningfully connect directly with Hans' where the tall and thin young man standing beside the icy Norwegian Queen, who had made such an impact on the entire Westergaard clan it seemed, was clinging desperately to the arm of his Sjoforsvaret naval uniform.

"All these years, my cold heart could not see through the cold mists shrouding my judgment, particularly concerning you. But I was too blind to see…" In Herbert's eyes there was a compassion that Hans had never before seen, rather than the disdain and indifference the shunned boy was accustomed to see reflecting back at him from this parent and any member of his family in his youth.

"It has been brought to my attention in the form of a letter that my wife and Queen, Louise's greatest wish was for me, as your father, to rediscover my heart and bring our sons together as a family. I remember now, that I made a promise to someone I loved dearly. I had only forgotten how much I loved her, for a while there…" King Herbert speaks sincerely to the assembled crowd of his handsome sons all listening in rapt attention standing before him.

"But I have failed her – and in so doing, all of you – for far too many a year as a poor example of a God-fearing patriarch. I can only beg your forgiveness, my sons. One of my greatest sorrows is to the mother of my children and my God for the poor treatment and lifetime full of ill will and animosity towards an innocent child who languished certainly in a resentment and rivalry between brothers that your mother would have despised." Herbert's deep voice was still and quiet as he admits his mistaken past with humility.

"Towards you, Hans, her youngest son. My Louise's final gift of love to me. _Tilgiv mig._ _Tilgiv mig_ …(forgive me, forgive me…)…" As King Herbert whispers this somber apology, he silently urges Eugene to move the infirmed King towards the attentive group of men.

One by one, twelve of the grown-up Danish Princes part like waves of the ocean until Hans, all the way in the rear, was left to stand as the center of attention, for once unforgotten in the throne room.

With so many eyes upon him, the red-headed young man self-consciously blushes for the starved attention now lavished upon himself, with only his beautiful Ice Queen named Elsa hanging on his privileged arm.

"Forgiveness is the brother of repentance, for which I am in desperate need of myself, Father. So how could I lay blame upon you - any of you - when I am every bit as guilty in my own sins? But the Good Book states: _'For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you_.' (Matthew 6:14). So hope springs eternal for us all." With a tentative, hopeful smile filled with biblical wisdom, Hans honestly looks King Herbert in the eye with a mercy he never knew he had in him towards the cold Father and brothers who had so cruelly made his youth a living hell. With trembling eyes that were thinking of his wife's dying wish at long last fulfilled, King Herbert gives Hans a small, rare smile after his outcast son could say those words with no recriminations towards him. And the last vestiges of that cold mirror shard that once pierced his clouded heart fade away.

Again, it was through the Godly mercy he learned from this beautiful young Norwegian Queen towards himself, that Prince Hans was able to touch his own father's callous heart on some mysterious level with the honest truth few would dare speak to the grandiose ruler…

"Just look at all you've done to make a difference in our lives here already in Egeskov, my funny little chamber maid, Elsie… Ha ha ha… Do pardon me, _Queen_ Elsa of Arendelle." King Herbert uncharacteristically gives a chuckle that his throat had not been tickled by in many a year as he surveys how Count Rügen had been incased in an debilitating ice cube from his neck down.

"Well done, Elsie, if you don't mind me still calling you that. It will remind this old man to stay humble. This is quite an extraordinary young woman you have appropriated, Hans." The tall Danish King didn't seem so imposing when he affords Hans a crooked approving smile, roguish eyes assessing the meagerly dressed, but oh-so-dazzling Ice Queen dangling possessively on his youngest son's arm.

Elsa raises her delicate eyebrow in dismay at the older King's demeaning chauvinist remark as she instead turns to dote on cleaning the spattered blood from Hans' sideburn cheek with her icy fingertips quite intimately.

"It serves him right to be sheathed in a block of ice, Queen Elsa. This foul villain has been hardening my heart with his own brand of coldness for decades. I was just fool enough to fall for his tricks. An old, blind fool…" As he approaches, stern King Herbert, condemning himself, gives Elsa an impressed bow as he addresses her with both her titles, one of fondness, one of due respect.

But his pleased stare turns sour when Herbert's eyes make the unfortunate glance away from the handsome couple of Hans and Elsa to land upon the man ensconced in her ice. King Herbert recalls the full extent of Rügen's wicked contraventions of the past with a fleeting look upon Eugene's quizzical amber eyes…

"For all of these crimes, and even more unspoken sinful transgressions, as well as the corruption of so many irreplaceable years, the deserved sentence is swift death, Count Rügen." King Herbert glares at his subordinate with utter contempt at what he had done to a vibrant young girl who meant much to the King in days gone by.

And then there was Louise, whom this angelic young Ice Queen that Hans was fortunate to bring into both their lives, reminded a contrite Herbert of the tender, merciful compassion of.

"I have been taught, by this brave young ruler - much wiser than I, in her diminutive years compared my vast ones - that mercy comes from a greater Authority than any King in any kingdom on earth." King Herbert defers to the sovereign of Norway's gentle wisdom with a respectful nod to Elsa, vowing to that Higher Power - and to his Louise - to be a better man from henceforth.

"And though I wish it did not have to be this way, Humperdinck, justice demands a life for a life. So, as head of state, I fear the law must be carried out. Even if I gave you the choice, Cousin, I doubt you would leave my country, my kingdom, and especially my sons alone– every last one of them, titled or not – as you so indefensibly had insured all those years ago. So, with a heavy heart, I must sadly conclude you must ultimately face the sword." Balanced by Eugene on one side and Kaleb juxtaposed on the other, King Herbert draws his own impressive broadsword from its sheath attached to his proud naval uniform.

After a moment of apprehensive deliberation spent gazing in Eugene's steely amber eyes, Herbert holds his sword at parallel level to Count Rügen's exposed neck threateningly just above his constricted encasement of ice.

Silent as the grave, the King of Denmark awaits the criminal's answer before the final punishment phase of this latest trial begins…

 ** _…bang…thump…bang…thump…_**

 ** _…Bang!..Thump…Bang!..Thump!..._**

 ** _…BANG! THUMP! BANG! THUMP!_**

And just as these perilous courtroom proceedings seemed to be under the now right-minded King's honorable control at an apparently effectual conclusion, yet another _big_ problem was about to ominously emerge from the pristine Danish countryside morn, to knock on Egeskov Castle's stately palace doors…

* * *

Merry Christmas, one and all!

I know, it's been forever since my last update! So Sorry! ^o^ But this time of year is as hectic as it is wondrous, with blessings at the end of a long journey! (whew! I finally got this chapter full of my scribbled notes-to-self all through the busy month together at last! Hope you liked it!)

There were more than a few of the great Charles Dickens' 'Christmas Carol' references in this epic chapter surrounding King Herbert's transforming heart. I thought it would add much sentiment to my chapter in the flavor of the season. Did you pick up that legendary author's heartfelt lessons, to apply kindness, mercy and patient forbearance to all our lives on this beautiful and crisp holiday morn? ^_^

Please review your favorite parts of this pivotal chapter when you're festivities making merry are at a lull, dear friends! Did you enjoy Helsa's angst? Hans' Scrooge-like Father's single night reformation? Was it an exciting, unexpected brotherly surprise save for Hans? Lots of ups and downs for our cast, with more surprises to come next year! I wonder what's ominously on the horizon now? Stay tuned! ^_^

We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year with the peace and love of the Lord with you all year 'round!

Love,

HarukaKou

P.S. Happy Birthday to our beloved Savior and loving Lord, sweet Baby Jesus!

And God bless us all, everyone!

P.P.S My talented artistic big sister, Setsuna, illustrated a new Helsa Christmas portrait to celebrate the season! It''s up on her blog on Tmblr if you would like to get one more Christmas surpeise present! It's a beauty, and probably will be featured in the story sometime in the future! (IF and when everything settles down for the new couple for a Merry mistletoe filled Christmastime in Arendelle. ^-^ Right now, here in Egeskov, the story takes place in early-mid September, so there's some time before the holiday season for them!)

Check the beautiful kissy portrait out at Tmblr under QueenElsaWestergaard for a final Christmas treat from Frozen Again!

Thanks for your great reviews, everyone! And have a Happy and blessed New Year!


	25. Chapter 25 - The Power of a Kiss

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 25**

 **"The Power of a Kiss"**

 _Okay. Left or right?_

With her eyes tightly shut to inwardly focus, Anna had been running up flight after flight of castle stairs for the past few minutes blindly. She had sensed her necklace of troll crystals vibrating around her neck begin to shiver with every step forward.

Well, she wasn't running _exactly_ blindly. The newlywed Princess had been following the mental map her incredible man of nature had implanted in her brain for the clear best path up to the roof through this foreign palace.

So, with a bread crumb trail-like method of pathfinding, the ginger girl had ascended nearly all four flights of winding long stairwells of Egeskov, up into its tall high-peaked towers. Furtively quick, Anna had woven through the secret inner passages of the centuries old Egeskov fortress Castle's hidden recesses.

Despite the urgency Kristoff had imparted to her before his link had been severed, the sprightly girl's innate wonder still had her snooping. The tinkling troll crystals around her neck persuaded the wanderlust maiden to dally a bit when she picked up some trace remnants of familiar signatures so intensely that the girl had to pause in her upward sprint to check it out.

Anna's curiosity was piqued enough to make a small divergence from the main staircase into the servant's stairwell that led up into a back attic crawl space.

"Hey! That Elsa's hair tie!" Feeling like a bloodhound on a red hot trail, Anna can't help but squeal out her sister's name aloud when she ducks into the makeshift servant's bedroom in the attic storage area and finds her sibling's small forgotten belonging.

Like a private eye/ ace detective hooking her first juicy clue that made her only itch for more, Anna squeezes Elsa's snowflake decorated blue hair ribbon in her excited palm. The troll crystals tinkle even brighter when Anna senses her big sister's magical ice still hanging thick in the still air of this attic bedroom.

Though she knew she shouldn't delay, nor poke around a place that was not her own home, the nosy young woman can't help but dash down into the attic's mysterious layers, nonetheless. Past the old boyish bedroom furniture, the cracked, discarded cheval mirror, and right into the hidey-hole entrance that her citrine green and golden yellow dangling troll crystals urged her in this direction with their soft glow.

"Elsa? Did you find your way in here, too?" Anna whispers, still feeling her dear one's light scent in this rear attic storage area as well.

Without a second thought, inquisitive Anna of Arendelle ducks into the oh-so-inviting wide open entrance behind the recently dust moved oval mirror.

As a secret treehouse, squirrel-note hiding little girl who had no companion but herself to amuse many lonely hours away as a child, Anna instantly understood that a little boy with a strangely similar story once lived here. The covert markings and letterings on the inner stairwells and hidden cove entrances caught her vivid imagination on wildfire.

"Hans? This was your secret place, wasn't it?" Anna mouths her ex-fiancé's name in the question as she recognized his striking penmanship. Even at an early age, it was the same strong, yet artistic hand from the sketchbook she had discovered with Lukas in the Fattigskole convent barn's rafters.

Like a clever little ferret, Anna weaves into the attic's secret interior section until she found herself inside Hans' artistic lair where many portraits, sculptures and carvings were a-plenty.

"Whoa." She had tried to objectively contemplate the deeper meaning behind the sketchbook that undoubtedly belonged to a young Hans for the past few days. Anna had already gotten past the voyeur aspect of that 'Red' having a fetish fixation on illustrating her sister Elsa at her many stages of life—more associating it with a forbidden longing.

But the physical amount of time and energy young Hans must've devoted to his one dream – to find and woo and wed Princess Elsa of Arendelle – was impressive, although still disturbing.

"So, you never really intended to propose to me… You always wanted Elsa…Wow, Hans. Talk about obsessive-compulsive disorder. You were one love-sick puppy." A puckered mouth, hands-on-hips Anna's jealous-little-sister ire was about to shoot through the roof as her eyes scan along the creepy arrangement of sculptures and wispy paintings all depicting Elsa, quite beautifully, around the secret alcove.

That is, until her distrustful lidded eyes alight upon a sweet little set of clay figures of her and Elsa as children - obviously the artist's yearning to be part of her own family. Only an innocent heart could've created these well-crafted figures from a pored over naval newspaper article of long ago depicting her Papa, King Agdar; and her Mama, Queen Idun, as well. The young six-year-old Elsa and a four-year-old figure of her babyface braided, adorable self were giddily playing together, holding hands as the perfect happy family.

And there was a young eight-year-old Hans' figurine standing right alongside them, as if the motherless boy always wished to belong to someone who would want to hold his hand.

 _You were so lonely growing up, too. Just like me and Elsa, weren't you, Hans? But you had no one. No Mama. Hardly a Papa. And way too many bigger, meaner brothers._

 _No wonder you turned into such a jerk…_

"Poor kid…" Overcoming her first impression of shock and disgust at this pervert's haven with pity, the honesty in Anna murmurs words of compassion instead, despite herself.

After her eyes quickly scan a few sorrowful poems the sad and lost little boy had attached to some religious artwork much like the ones in Hans' sketchbook she found at the convent, Anna moves on to the exemplary scholastic report cards.

There were numerous award-winning plaques of an outcast teenager displaying his scholarly grades that the unloved young man thought might allow him to gain acceptance with his current cold family—to no avail.

All of Hans' gloomy past days of his dismal, unloved youth seemed to be forgotten in the minutiae of this tiny attic cubbyhole full of secret hope and longing. It almost made Anna forget about the feisty anger aroused by this particular Danish Prince's obsession with the delicate sister headstrong Anna would always be protective over.

"You were just like me, Hans…just wanting to be loved…" With all that had transpired between them, from two years ago until now, a more grown-up than she gave herself credit for Anna couldn't stop the tears forming in her eyes that were more empathetic in moments of solitude than when she was full of bravado in a crowd.

 _Sniffle…_

"Not even going to ask. But I am glad to see you're not totally freaking out about this place. I think I would, if Elsa were my sister." Kristoff's flat voice interrupts Anna's bittersweet thoughts that were a tad too benevolent and forgiving towards Hans for his green-eyed sake.

Upon hearing Kristoff's voice not just in her head, Anna tosses the clay sculpture figure of a cheerless faced young Master Westergaard that she had been fingering.

"Kristly! You escaped!" Anna squeaks her true love's pet name in a high-pitched, somewhat sheepish whisper. In his left hand, Kristoff catches the small boyish figure she had sent flying through the air with a twisted lip smirk of his own on his ruggedly handsome face.

"Yeah. I escaped to find out where you went." Almost accusingly envious of the redheaded man who wasn't even here, though his presence was implicitly felt in this tiny room, Kristoff peers into the small enclosed attic cove that a young Hans had created between the cracks of his lonely castle life.

Guiltily, Anna trips over Hans' makeshift desk, fortuitously falling directly into her young capable husband's arms.

"What in heck are you doing in here, Anna? Didn't I send you up to the roof for an explicit reason, Feisty Pants?" With a wry smile on his tilted head, Kristoff raises an eyebrow down at the little wife in his embrace after he caught her _Red_ -handed perusing her previous old flame's secret lair.

"These troll crystals tinkled my way here." Blaming the moderately inanimate objects shivering in her wiggled hand at the Nature man's glare, Anna sheepishly smiles with a guilty shrug and toothy grin up at her tall blond mountaineer.

"Anna, troll crystals don't make you _nosy_. You were curious. Those crystals have to be treated with great – " Kristoff had to be nearly bent in half to fit in this cramped child's space of Hans' former hideaway.

"—responsibility. I know, I know." Anna repeats Granpabbie's ominous warning in her lowest gravel voice the troll leader used when he bestowed the special collection of crystals at their wedding as a present.

"But… curiosity killed the cat? Eek!" Tripping again in this confined area as the graceless girl takes a step backwards and her boot toe snags on a homemade wooden easel, Anna lets out a little shriek before collapsing again into Kristoff's well received grasp.

Just then, the entire castle shutters with a sudden force impact on its western side.

"Did I do that?" With a pair of big wide eyes, Anna leans into Kristoff's sure chest as she tries to regain her off kilter balance. Her clumsiness knocks the neatly arranged objects and portraits stacked on the rattled desk until Hans' secret lair was quite riotous.

"No, Silly! Let's just say it's some party crashers I invited." Kristoff knowingly taps his skull with that smug, all-knowing expression on his handsome face that Anna usually adored.

"Plan A is starting already. So, we have to get a move on, or we'll miss the fun!" Kristoff gives the soft part of Anna's squishy bottom a familiar 'fun' squeeze of his own doing, well beneath her skirt to get his new bride motivated to leave this very interesting spot and follow him back out and up towards the castle roof.

 _Oh, that's right! I still owe you, Mister!_

 ** _SLAPPP!_**

As Kristoff moves to lead her out of the attic cove and down the winding halls towards an upper floor exit, Anna stops to harshly whack her partner's soon cherry-red cheek.

"Hey! I thought you liked that sort of thing!" An astounded Kristoff, thinking he knew her thoroughly well after their, albeit short, but _memorable_ , approximate five day honeymoon, counters Anna's violence with the pouty rub to his maligned chin.

After all, being a mind reader of his young and vibrant bride in their most intimate moments, did give a man a healthy ego as to his performance.

"Yeah! But I do **NOT** appreciate being shut out of our special link, Kristoff Bjorgman! I am not a child, to be told by you, 'the adult', to go stand in the corner when you deem the subject too touchy. What is it you were trying to hide from me earlier, anyway?" In the fervor of their second martial argument, Anna was not about to let her best friend of a husband squirm out of an explanation as to his mental mind block that sincerely hurt her feelings.

{"Anna! Can't we discuss this later? I'm a little busy right now to deal with this."} Obviously a newbie to the whole connubial scheme, the blond mountain man did not relish passing his best girl off like this. But his already strained mind, just coming into this psychic stuff, was being tugged in every possible direction.

Though he was hard pressed to admit it, Kristoff's head felt about to implode by now. The Ice Harvester recalls his simpler, peaceful life before, just swinging his saw and chopping up ice mindlessly, as he rubs his aching temple, not needing one more headache.

And sharing what was going on about Elsa's unanticipated, sudden proposal to Hans wasn't exactly on Kristoff's list of good ideas to spring on his high strung gal right now at this moment.

"Ergh! I am not budging another step, Mr. Bjorgman, until you explain what's going on here in this crazy place! So there." ' _I'm busy'_ was obviously not the correct tack for Kristoff to approach his life's partner who was easily riled about being put off and constantly needed attention.

"Quit pouting and get up here already, Anna!" Kristoff pauses where he had already climbed halfway up the service ladder that would eventually lead up to Egeskov's high tower and its conical turret.

"They'll arrive at any minute, and I need to focus! Come on, Anna! Stop being so stubborn! You've got to help me bring Svala and her passengers in!" The big muscleman displays his ample physical worth by effortlessly lifting Anna under her armpits with one powerful arm to carry her up to the gabled pediment beside the castle's teal roof spires.

The lifelong mountain climber squarely sets his woman down to the elongated roof's crenelated parapet flat between Egeskov's high tower turrets. Standing up in the dizzying height of early morning breezes, even the young Wind Whisperer was affected by the disorienting altitude more than ninety feet off the ground as he peered precariously over its vertigo causing edge, eyes scanning to the left side below.

But when fearless of heights, tipsy acrobat Anna tries to peek that way too, Kristoff moves a measured step to block her from falling _and_ looking.

"Who's the one being stubborn now?! I am **not** helping you do anything, until you tell me – _exactly_ – what happened down at the trial! What did _that_ Hans do that has you covering up for him again, Mister!?" Snappish Anna jumps to conclusions that Kristoff was protecting _that_ Hans again from her wrath.

The orangey-ginger haired girl pokes her big cuddly mountain man in the chest accusingly.

"You know, you're really cute when you're being difficult, Feisty Boots." A smiling Kristoff, whether by necessity or some other driving force, succumbs to the all enveloping urge to capture Anna's twisted pouty lips within his, letting all his pent-up passions overwhelm his perky bride's current vexation with a powerful kiss.

"You're doing this distract me, _huff-huff,_ aren't you, Kristly?" Pulling her woozy head back from their hot kiss almost a hundred feet off the ground, Anna breathlessly huffs out, her heart pounding heavily as her hunger for him - that well outweighed her irritation - was on the delicious periphery of being quenched.

"Maybe that's one of the reasons." Kristoff responds huskily, now finding it easy to fend off her mental brushes against his mind barrier where Anna had been gnawing to reestablish their psi-connection to satisfy her burning curiosity. But when Kristoff gives a quick chew to his petulant girl's ear, his eyes burning down at her with pure desire, she almost gives in.

"It's working." Anna murmurs in ecstasy, licking her newlywed starved lips invitingly to look up in his enthralling eyes.

"But it's no fair." Breath-drained and limp in his arms, Anna was not willing to give in to her sneaky husband's whims without at least a stab at invading his mind. But with one more stolen breath kiss, he was assured that Anna was a puddle on the tower floor that he smoothly pulls her up to.

So there the pair were, kissing so wildly oblivious to the rest the world on the open air castle parapet tower, that neither noticed Sven fly over from the other matching Egeskov high tourelle and its stepped gables. Not until the blushing Rangifer nudges Kristoff's currently engaged arm beneath his gold trimmed black cape that was flowing wildly on the wind he commanded.

Calmly in a cool and collected voice, Kristoff unloads his plan to the little girl he believed had been totally mesmerized by his overt show of dominant manly command.

"Anna, I want you to take Sven into the village to find those friends from the Snuggly Duckling Rapunzel telling us about. Several of the Corona guardsmen went with them to the local tavern too, I believe. We'll need all their muscle and jailbreaking savvy as back-up if this court trial doesn't work out the way I hope. I already sent Flurru and Snaedis to collect them, but I'll need you to physically go and alert them that they're needed in the west wing Throne Room, right away. Then maybe we can all get out of this crazy place, ASAP."

 _"_ Wait. What?" Ensconced in the fresh whipping autumn breeze and her man's potent scent for a few blissful seconds, Princess Anna dizzily begins to come to her senses. Her blue-green eyes blink multiple times before she believed what she was hearing from him.

 _You_ _ **were**_ _trying to distract me with your sweet kisses, you sneaky devil!? Just to get rid of me?! I know what you're up to, you…you…MAN! You know I can take care of myself in a fight, so I know you're not just protecting me from any danger down there! You are_ _ **hiding**_ _something, Kristoff Bjorgman!_

 _But two can play at this game._

The spunky ginger, who did not like being told what to do—and even less being tricked into it— concludes in her silent brooding thoughts. Using her own ever-revolving stratagem, independent minded Princess Anna of Arendelle jumps up on tippytoe to reinstate their intense liplock, much to Kristoff's taken aback surprise.

Anna's determined mind inquisitively tickles the edges of Kristoff's confused senses until she chooses just the right moment of his satisfied bliss her tantalizing tongue ensured to peer into Kristoff's vulnerable psyche, now wide open to her.

Intuitively sensing the heat of his discomfort against the pale aqua folds of his shirt in the early morning sun that had risen high overhead. Anna's frisky hands easily unbutton Kristoff's heated shirtfront, sliding her hands to revel in her man's ample musculature.

From his eight-pack rockhard abs, to his rippling pecs, tense intercoastals and tight inscriptors, Anna was growing quite lightheaded again herself as her hands run greedily along his sturdy, ripped lines in the wind whipping breeze, knowing this was all hers for the taking…

…As was his slowly opening like a book mind…

 _…I'm zoning you out now…Gotta keep focused…_

Knowing her way around her lover by rote, Anna expertly plucks the last petals off Kristoff's secretive mental flower…

…and feisty Princess Anna's enlightened mind recoils at what she uncovered there.

"You LET Elsa do **WHAT**?!" In the next shocking moment, Anna yanks back from their passion to wildly slap Kristoff's other cheek, with an incredulous cry out at the thought revelation she had just seduced out of him.

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, Anna! It's all good. It was probably just to get Hans off the hook, right? Your sister knows what she's doing. She's a smart lady. So just chill." Kristoff realizes that his defenses must've slipped against his vivacious lovebird as he tries to calm her fireworks from exploding at his most recent impressed memory of Elsa and Hans that she had mind read through their tight bond.

"Sven!" An emotionally perturbed Anna hurriedly yells out to the morning sky in search of the reindeer bull friend who at least had been doing _his_ honest duty hovering the sky above, scouting for the incoming travelers that were expected.

"Get me down to that courtroom, ASAP!" Totally ignoring his unacceptable authority, the livid girl squirms out of her husband's embrace to hop onto the reindeer's furry back. She hangs onto Sven's gray neck nape like it was second nature, leaving Kristoff in the roof's dust.

"Wait up, Anna! Here comes Plan B, right now!" Snow Prince Kristoff's intuitive senses notified him that his mother's enchanted flying horse and his father's special airborne reindeer he was waiting for were about to ascend the Danish pink dawn's horizon.

Kristoff gives a waved signal and mental side note to Svala with her red nosed rider and his new bride and Nysnaer with her three thankfully slim passengers to follow his lead.

Then the Wind Whisperer, in a death wish to end it all at his new wife leaving him – NOT! - fearlessly leaps off the ledge of Egeskov's high tower to land upon Sven's already in flight back directly behind his nonplussed Anna.

"I didn't get to that part yet. Are those your 'party crashers', Kristly? They don't look that scary to me." All forgiven between the couple, without a bit of resentment nor missing an adventuresome beat, Anna teases Kristoff while flying fullspeed ahead. She glances behind Sven's airborne tail to peek at the interesting quintet of passengers between flying reindeer Svala and the Snow Queen's mystical white mare named Nysnaer.

"Nah. They're just my extra insurance for happy endings." Kristoff replies, a dismissive grin etched on his face that Anna could feel from depths of her linked psyche.

"I like happy endings." Anna responds with a toothy buoyant smile shared with Sven.

"The party crashers have already arrived in the courtroom." Getting into his role of Snow Prince now that all his plans were coming together – _he hoped and prayed, at least –_ Kristoff's enigmatic words did not restrict his wide-open mind to his other half now, as he silently vowed to her he would never do again for as long as they lived.

"Hee hee! You have got to be kidding me! Hee hee! Oh, Kristly! Now I know why I fell in love with you ! {"You are amazing! Ha hee hee!"}" From angry to giddy in a whisper of the wind, Anna gleefully giggles at the fascinating ideas that Kristoff was ready to share with her mind through their soulful bond.

"Umm-hmm." Kristoff nods affirmatively from behind, quite full of himself at all his involved plan manipulation and intricate delegated subplots all coming together as of part of his grand scheme.

"This I have got to see! Step on it Sven! Kristly, you are brilliant!" Clapping her hands in anticipated excitement now, Anna leans back to fluff Kristoff's bangs on his masterful head with pride.

"Yeah… Glad you still think _I'm_ tops." Kristoff says a bit testily, adding with a smug, competitive smirk, "And I don't even paint well."

Kristoff makes one last little swipe at the artistically impeccable, cultured other man at the crux of all this intrigue.

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Kristly." A penitent Anna lovingly admits as Kristoff cradles her in his arms from behind. He lets gravity's momentum push his strong muscular body against her warmed back, his compatibly reassuring breath in her braided hair as their flying friend skydives at record pace.

{"Hold on tight, Buddies!"}

Now the courageous Snow Prince and his daring Princess with their youthful souls again conjoined as one with no secrets, ride upon their flying reindeer Sven's sturdy back. Svala, Nysnaer and their passengers clinging on for dear life were right behind to make a plummeted dive down towards Egeskov's western side entry and the chaotic courtroom waiting unawares inside…

* * *

 ** _It all began several mornings ago at the_** ** _North_** **_Mountain_** ** _…_**

King Agdar of Arendelle was not the type of man to just sit back and let the pieces fall where they may. Especially not when this askew jigsaw involved either of his daughters whom Agdar fiercely loved so protectively.

So after his indigo-eyed Queen had judged his still recuperating body fit enough to travel, Agdar insisted the royal couple leave the quiet refuge of Elsa's Ice Palace to join their intrepid daughter, whom Idun had requested to retrieve her older sister from Corona to bring back to Arendelle.

While she was there, perhaps Elsa, at her wily mother's further instruction, could bring back Princess Rapunzel's absconded husband Eugene, as well as that dashing young Danish Prince Hans who had heroically rescued not only the royal family personally, but all of Norway from that malevolent sea beast as well.

But the two gallant men had left too early before they were able to be granted the recognized knighthoods and awards for bravery they each well deserved. So Idun reminded her King that they would be gravely remiss in not honoring their heroes.

Agdar had pondered many things whilst lying beside his bundled up warm Queen, while his finely crafted ice dory was sailing along peaceful waters of the Skaggerrak. The worried father thought he saw blossoming romance between Elsa and that impressive young Dane.

So the King of Arendelle was more interested in serving as chaperone for the supposedly uneventful return trip back to Arendelle for his naive and innocent Elsa. Though Agdar respected her as a powerful ice wielding Queen in her own right, he judged that she _– of his heavy heart's own doing, yes -_ had led a sheltered life and may not be equipped to properly conduct her own heart enough to dally with such a striking young man seeking her attentions.

There was also the fact that young man _was_ one of King Herbert's sons, at that. Agdar's lifelong prejudice against the conquering race and its militaristic kingdom, just to his country's south, had not been abated over the years. For beyond personal reasons, Agdar had witnessed Denmark's King Herbert's ruthless land grabbing, power hungry tactics all his royal life and had always been wary of any ties with the _Danes_.

Now, Idun was of a totally different bent when it came to any prospective mate for Elsa, and fortunately, already happily bespoken Anna. The Queen herself had been quite impressed, in the best way possible, by young Hans Westergaard's apparent honest affections for her elder daughter. The handsome young man had, along their incredible journey, showed his courage and self-sacrificing bravery against terrible danger as a capable man, had shown penitent kindness to them, even to fiery little Anna, while espousing Christ's humility time and time again, and reliably protected Elsa, who he treated like a Queen, from all her fears – even fear of herself where even they, as her parents, could not reach her.

No, Idun was not going to allow this singular young man to so easily depart from her precious daughter's chance at a happy, fulfilled life that Mama Idun was certain she had glimpsed between Elsa and her young man.

Even if she had to drag obstinate Papa Agdar kicking and screaming all the way to the altar.

"Why would any of his sons be any different, Idun? You should well remember, from personal experience, of that disagreeable clan's undesirable offerings yourself, had I not saved you from that perilous destiny." Agdar had spoken these arrogant words at the onset of their journey, when he was in a more jovial mood.

But along their scenic journey to Corona, the Snow Queen's son had psychically contacted the couple through Idun's special symbiotic sharing of her physical body to serve as host for the Mistress of the North's unfathomable mind.

Idun could not hide from her husband for long, telling of Elsa's detour into Denmark along her mission to Corona. The fact that Kristoff and Anna and the others had left Arendelle to all accompany her there in search of Hans and his brother Eugene, plus the tiny little detail that they were now experiencing some, small legal difficulties, was a bit harder to phrase the urgency part of lightly. But anxious Papa Agdar's ice alarms were instantly alerted. For all Idun's persuasiveness, he knew her as well as she knew him to sense something amiss.

After young Kristoff's communication, the elder Queen of Norway had done her best to word in the most disarming way possible his call for them to come to Egeskov. But none too impartial Agdar Bernadotte visiting the Westergaard 'Danes' was never to be a pleasant vacation, for now two reasons of jealousy's double bias, over two decades apart.

So once the Wind Whisperer's contact was made known, the royal couple's leisurely southward crossing towards the mainland was instantly diverted.

And ever since, the inward, silent consternation on Agdar's still debonair, ginger blonde moustache had twitched to cause the lateral lines across his forehead to wrinkled fiercely.

In his newly embraced element upon his ice propelled sled, with his adventure loving Queen ever-encouraging at his side, the liberated Ice King, full of a renewed virility, had hastened his quicker ice slick to cross the formerly treacherous section of the Straits directly into Jutland's southern island of Funen, by way of the North sea.

Agdar had long ago figured the exact latitude/ longitude lines that would take him the swiftest way possible to and from _that_ particular kingdom's location. From way back when he and Idun were yet wooing and a certain ruthless Danish prince with his eye on Denmark's parliament, still believed he had a claim on the doe-eyed Swedish princess' 'stolen' heart, enough to have challenged Crown Prince Agdar to a duel.

It was a duel that gutsy young Princess Idun thankfully had the courage to intercede on the battlefield thereof, lest there be icy bloodshed that day, and Agdar's frozen secret revealed. Idun had sworn that no pledge between herself and Prince Anders had ever been troth. She had to plea before a court he only had mistakenly assumed her agreement by her fault of foolish misunderstanding alone. Flat-out rejection would certainly have led to war between the two kingdoms' virile young princes pridefully vying over her.

So ever since that time, some twenty-five years ago, the relations between the kingdom of the Southern Isles and Arendelle to the north had been tepid, to say the least.

But, nonetheless in that direction the Ice King had taken a quick detour, straightforward towards the Danish Southern Isles village of _Kværndrup_ , to Egeskov Castle…

But this time, he was ready to put finish to a fight.

"Agdar. I know you're uptight. I can see it in your eyes, my love. Please try to calm down. I'm sure Anna's young man only meant for us to stop by for a visit to old King Herbert's birthday celebration… Since we are in the vicinity, it would only be polite." After exhausting nearly every other excuse to tone down Kristoff's exigency of the mind tapped message she had hesitantly imparted to her other half, the dark brown haired woman had predicted her excitable Ice King's fears.

Queen Idun cooed peaceful songs in her love's ears as she clung to him on his magical ice sled, the wild spirit in her exhilarated to be alive body thrilled to ride at her lover's side.

But she did not enjoy him being in this dour, anxious mood.

"You said the Snow Queen's son stated that there is a court trial and my girls are somehow involved, did he not, Idun? The Royal House of Denmark is not an amenable place, nor one of our close allies, as you personally well remember. I do not relish my beloveds being subjected to any harsh Danish laws under the jurisdiction of that pompous regal King nor any of his politically powerful sons who may harbor ill will towards our family." King Agdar practically spit out the bad taste in his mouth at the very thought of either of his children at the mercy of the Royal Danish King or his undesirably spoiled sons.

Particularly the cold, manipulative one who had been Agdar's main rival for Idun's hand once upon time.

 _Why must Elsa be involved with that despicable lineage at all?!_

"Now, Agdar. It has been many years since we have dealt with anyone representing this kingdom. Perhaps they have changed their ways in our absence. With the benefit of the doubt, we should tread very carefully and respectfully since we are the visitors on the soil of this proud nation. We would not wish to stir up any international problems between our neighbor states, for Elsa's sake as ruler, would we?" Again portraying the optimistic, calm angel upon her love's cool shoulder, slender and stylish Queen Idun was bundled up in a warm winter coat and fur trimmed cap to look the part as she leaned forward on her husband's advancing ice slide, to gently brush away her handsome Agdar's worry-wrinkled brow.

Her eyes danced though, at his jealous nature, even after all these years, at the thought of a reunion with the politically ambitious, cold fish Danish Prince and Chancellor, Anders.

"I _am_ doing this with Elsa's interests in mind, my pet." Agdar answers with warm heartfelt words and twinkling pale ice blue eyes to reassure her fears. Then his gaze turns stone cold as he assesses Egeskov Castle quickly coming into view.

Agdar raises a glowing blue-white hand towards the hills just beyond the impressive fourteenth century Renaissance water castle estate the pair were sky racing toward on his ice slide.

"Please, min alskare, please just don't do anything rash and untoward without deep thought as to the consequences." Queen Idun has always tried to be the even, level head in the family. Although, she had no idea of her alpha male King's already envisioned challenging arrival.

"Yes dear. I have thought about this visit deeply for a _very_ long time." Something akin to a class reunion show off swaggerer, King Agdar almost displayed a wicked smile to roll across his comely face with the arrogant thought he was _trying_ his best to contain.

Perhaps the time _was_ right for him to somehow reveal his ice powers to his first and only rival for his precious Idun's affections once and for all. That despicable second-in-line, full-of-it Prince Anders of the Southern Isles could do with being taken down a peg or two.

But Agdar's smirk instantly fades upon sensing his daughter's distress written on the subarctic wind currents they shared the command of the nearer they approached. The Ice King instinctively releases his extended fingertips' snapped cryokinetic mastery to awaken the sleeping giant, lying in wait close by.

"R-RROOARRR!" Marshmallow, AKA 'Ice Beast', kilometers away, un-crumples from his forced hibernation with the snowgies in his ample storage compartments when his Ice Mistress' similarly endowed parent summons the frosty ice monster to arise from where he was stationed behind Egeskov Chapel, hidden beyond the hills.

"Let us pay a visit to the kingdom of King Herbert's Southern Isles. It seems I must speak with him on the urgent matter of his youngest son, whether I like it or not." King Agdar did, at first, take to well-polished Hans Westergaard's pleasing demeanor and noble acts of bravery, despite his family name.

But Hans' romantic turn towards Elsa that the young naval officer's winning heroism and patient care had impressed upon them was irrevocably tainted by Anna's accusatory admittance of his past crimes against both his daughters.

Besides, like many a jealous father before him, Agdar was not ready for another man to lay claim to his much prized, naïvely delicate child's most tender of affections.

Little did he know that his innocent _little_ Elsa was the one doing all the claiming inside of this hallowed castle's trembling walls…

* * *

 ** _BANG! THUMP! BANG! THUMP! BANG!_**

A fully armored Marshmallow – ahem – Snow Beast's heavy footsteps and pounding fists bang ominously against his own voluminous chest to shake the ancient monks' brick side of Egeskov Castle as he approached. The Snow Beast's 'light greeting' to make his powerful presence known was only eclipsed by his formidable shadow befalling the many glass windowpanes to its western side.

The few screaming women in the gallery who had not either already fainted from the sight of Count Rügen's fresh blood spilt earlier or had already fled in horror of the violent courtroom brawl, do so now as an enormous Snow Beast moves in relentlessly against Egeskov's melee-besieged Royal throne room.

 ** _"HHH-MMM?!"_** A confused Marshmallow stomps up to the peaceful exterior of the massive arched Palladian landscape window to peer in with ice shivered trepidation.

The massive snow creature only makes it worse when his gleaming charcoal eyes squint deeper into the decorative, wide arched thick glass mullion paned window area where he sees his upset faced, Ice Mistress Elsa seemingly being held hostage.

The platinum blonde woman at first shakes her head and gives hand signals for Marshmallow to stand down. But then, when a wild-eyed Elsa's attention returns to a more shocking event inside, she starts to wordlessly scream in horror to alert a certain red-headed figure across the courtroom.

Initially fuzzy to Marshmallow's hoarfrost coated vision, the snow giant begins to make out a person who was quite familiar to Marshmallow for deducting 2/3 of his leg and sent the Snow Beast plummeting down the North Mountain ravine.

And yep, the result of that recognition was as we imagined.

 ** _ROAR! G-GROWWLLL!_**

Marshmallow unleashes his past two years worth of retribution onto the Palladium windows, directed mainly at the singular target inside who made him see Red …

 ** _BANG! CRASH! CRUMBLE! CRACKLE! CRUNCH!_**

As the Danish Throne Room's decorative large landscape window shatters in the Snow Beast's fury, its crumbling broken glass shards are contained in a thin-walled layer of ice to shower down outwardly.

The warm clear autumnal sunrise rising in this peaceful village of _Kværndrup's_ eastern sky abruptly turns frosty cold and filled with unnatural winter clouds.

Mirroring his Snow Beast's cold fury, the Ice King elevates on cool air streams to land upon his armored creature's shoulder. Agdar lashes out in true dramatic style when he sees his platinum child's face darken in sheer terror and disquiet, as Elsa cries out for someone she must love truly…

* * *

 _From the inside of the Throne room, viewpoint shift, back where we originally left off…_

 ** _BANG! THUMP! BANG! THUMP!_**

The castle's large Palladium decorative window stood little chance of being sustained for long versus Marshmallow's beatings and Ice King Agdar's cryokinetic infusion blast combined.

But the crumbling glass window was the least of a disoriented Queen Elsa's worries.

As, in everyone's inattention upon the Snow Beast outside the window's first startling appearance, vile Count Rügen chose to use his final moments on earth to exact ultimate revenge rather than beg for a crumb of the merciful forgiveness that was being so flagrantly passed through the court.

 _It is sickening that such blight on this kingdom is now being embraced because of the weakness known as mercy, King Herbert…But the Lord of darkness will drag his angels down with him to be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone…_

Even at the end of a just, punishing sword, the Count of Württemberg was unrepentant and vindictive enough to spit out cruel venom at this royal family he thought he had deceived.

In utter disbelief, after all Rügen's years of loyal service, King Herbert ruled in favor of his most unworthy son of them all – Rügen's archenemy Hans.

"Then you all will join myself and the Devil Boy you have embraced in your fold – straight to Hell!" His voice starting out so low no one could hear, then building to a crescendo with the curses of doom, the cracked Count's demented anger seethes at his cousin, the King, and his sudden betrayal with the gravelly phrase.

That enmity drives the evil villain to find the wily, vengeful strength to break through Elsa's momentarily unmonitored ice sheath around his body to produce a small cricket ball sized sphere and pitch it to roll down towards King Herbert's questioning feet.

"What the hell is that?!" Eugene's fast reflexes were about to withdraw himself and the King from the tossed object that didn't live up to its announced hoopla. Until he looked more closely at it, and his quick wit was able to put the words together as he lightly moves the little ceramic ball with the toe of his boot quizzically, smirking down at the letdown attack when it so unassumingly comes to a shuddered stop before them without any recourse.

"Were we supposed to be impressed by the disappointing new toy you've got there, Rugy-Tugy? Because I personally find it wholly inadequate for a last ditch—" The irreverent, fast-talking man is cut off by the shivering, purple scarred cheek, sneering face of the malevolent Count.

"Find out first-hand, son of a gypsy whore!" His features as warped ugly as his spiteful mind and acrimonious heart, Humperdinck Rügen abruptly uses his own ice-weighted body to roll up to and topple over to press down on the newly invented device's plunger.

That suicidal act would cause the rudimentary beta form of what would be a later revered (and equally as feared) _hand_ _grenade_ was filled with just the right quotient of gunpowder, twisted metal and jagged iron cattrops to detonate and indeterminately kill, debilitate and/or maim the current King of Denmark and the future one at his side certainly, as well as many of his sons surrounding.

And that included Hans, and Eugene in the forefront, most of all…

"Eugene!" As both her parents hold her back, Rapunzel shrieks in sheer fright as she witnesses her handsome husband not tuck tail and run from the new, barbaric improvised weapon attack, but instead remain to stay and shield his new 'Father'.

Everyone watches in horrified slow motion how this clever orphaned boy threw himself bodily over King Herbert and Prince Kaleb alike, knocking the trio of them down to the ground as the explosive detonated.

The sharp twisted nails and maiming devised cattrops rip straight through Count Rügen's prone body launched atop the grenade, as all watching scream as the demon-possessed man's shredded guts and torso burst for an instant final death.

The gunpowder-packed grenade explodes for a terrible outcome to this centuries old castle and the tenuous future of the rulers of its kingdom…

 _Elsa!_

Hans' eyes said everything his lips didn't have the chance to speak as he quickly spins his Queen around again as if in a silent waltz. The quick thinking, agile man pulls Elsa's head down into the safety of his chest as he locks his entire body's thin frame around her core.

Hans Westergaard was readied to take the full impact of the explosive blast his book-learning of modern incendiary weapons made the adroit man instantly recognize the danger of.

"Hans!" Elsa felt her body pulled within, tucked into the folds, and defensively embraced around until she could be no more one with this young man beyond intimacy.

Intoxicated by his enticing cologne's sweet-scented embrace that prevailed over her fears, Elsa could almost imagine herself dying in his arms like this as the close quarter detonated grenade destructively explodes…

 _ **SZZT! BLASTT! SZZTTT!**_

 **"ELLSSAA!"** Riding upon her plummeting reindeer at nosebleed worthy speed, Princess Anna's shrill voice in fearful concern for her dear sister caught in the midst of this brutal storm was louder than the explosion.

Kristoff holds his energetic wife tight to her saddle seat as his Wind Whisperer arrow precise abilities mentally lend aid to King Agdar's defensive ice shield to ingeniously target and batten down the exploding grenade with an ultra thick pinpointed glacial layer.

King Agdar's cryokinetics in conjunction with the Snow Prince's gifts instantly fast freeze to contain the incendiary grenade's full destructive force that could have blown apart a great deal of this section of the Danish court, including its hallowed throne and ancient coat of arms.

"Bravo, Agdar! I heard you were alive. But this? Haha! Well done, man!" King Friedrich of Corona gregariously complements his, until recently, thought lost at sea brother-in-law.

The King of Prussia greets his Norwegian counterpart with a friendly slap to the back of the ice-smoke puffing Ice King after Agdar dismounts Marshmallow with a leap like a young athlete before them all.

Agdar waves Friedrich's accolades off to move as slick as ice past all the line-up of Danish princes standing to attention and saluting the King of Norway in awestruck wonder as they were just coming to. Agdar ignores them to use his cryo-prowess to sift through the hunkered down huddle of people all gathered together after bracing for the set-off grenade's impact.

"Elsa!?" Anna trips over herself, getting tangled in Kristoff's legs and Sven's saddle straps until the man himself has to pick his wife unceremoniously up by her waist to physically bring Anna to her sister's mental signature in the opposite direction.

"Elsa? Are you alright, min flicka ( _my girl_ )?" With motherly care on her lovely brow, Queen Idun arrives soon behind, her instinct taking her directly to Elsa's side, as she follows Anna.

"Have you found her, Idun?!" Agdar cries out, hearing his wife's tender voice in the chaos.

"She's here, Agdar! Elsa is just fine, thanks to this very special young man." ( _A_ _man for you at last_!) Queen Idun, after a swift, smiled inspection at her well-cared for child, leaves Elsa to Anna as she dashes away to reassure her frost-coated husband as quickly as possible before his innate cryokinetics get the better of him again.

Idun then joins her man's ice-strained side, rubbing her warm hands over his chilled temples, humming a soft calming lullaby and leading him outdoors into the sunlight to reinforce his nonstop trembling, on the verge of being overtaxed senses.

On her way to out, Idun passes her own big sister, Arianna, just approaching with Rapunzel, for a quick hug with tears in both their eyes.

"Don't worry. I'll go to Elsa, Idun." Queen Arianna promises her younger sibling with a loving, sisterly smile.

"Eugene?" In a desperate search for husband and son-in-law, Rapunzel and her mother are greeted by pieces of bloody charred and dismembered pieces of the self-destructed foul creature formerly known as Count Rügen.

"Eww!" Holding their offended noses upon seeing and smelling the grisly scene, the pair of Corona women simultaneously recoil as one, hugging one another at the unexpected ghastly scene in the middle of Egeskov's Throne Room.

"Where's Eugene?!" Rapunzel begins to freak out. Her husband, who was on the front lines, was not visible in all the smoke and rubble and all the princely sons gathered around Prince Anders who had taken charge of their concerted effort to carefully unbury their thankfully still alive Kingly father from the chaos and bring him to sit on his throne.

"Blon..die..." A weak voice murmurs from the pile nearby where Princes Berte, Ivers and Lars were propping up a familiar, dust blackened, coughing figure against the step, alongside a choking Crown Prince Kaleb, whom Emma, his stiff-upper-lip wife was already nursing.

"Eugene!" The perky Prussian princess makes a wild dash towards her guy, Pascal already having his retractable lizard-y tongue at the ready, should Eugene require a further call to consciousness.

"Is it bad? Just say it didn't disfigure the face." In his true bravado, Eugene smirks softly when a tearful Rapunzel arrives to weep over his laid-out body that had taken the brunt of whatever force Rügen's splattered, torn apart innards had when the nimble thief selflessly shielded King Herbert and Prince Kaleb from the initial blast.

"Ew, what's that stench? Smells worse than Attila's kitchen after one of those Snuggly Duckling questionable-meat barbeque smoke-outs." Unaware of the disgusting accuracy of his light-hearted jibe, Flynn Rider makes one of his inimitable comments that totally turned Rapunzel's already weak stomach, as Pascal fans the pair with someone's discarded hat.

"The face is just perfect, Eugene. And I couldn't be any prouder to call you my husband." Kneeling at his side, Rapunzel cups her love's face in her hands and kisses his reluctantly heroic features gently from stubble to stern.

"Any man would be proud to also call you his son…" King Herbert speaks in not so hidden double meaning from his throne as he smiles down to the pair after Prince Lars had used some smelling salts stashed in one of his coat pockets to revive his elderly parent.

"Kaleb! I am glad to see you fit enough to stand beside our hero, Prince Eugene." After sharing a paternal nod with his eldest son, Herbert's eyes lock with Eugene's moved ones poignantly for several seconds as he urges Kaleb to say something to that same effect. "All the highest honors our kingdom has to offer, Son. The Order of Danneborg, I believe will be suitable. You and I owe this brave young man our lives."

"Ahem…yes…Prince Eugene. We here in this country are infinitely in your debt for your…pluck and courage in the face of danger…to sacrifice yourself to shield Father…the King of Denmark. You will be presented with a…Danish Order of Danneborg for Gallantry." Formulating the words of state begrudgingly as he went along, Crown Prince Kaleb warily glances over this most interesting young man just recently ejected from this court, who his strict Father had for some reason taken a real fancy to.

"Wow. Another fancy ribbon. Just what I always wanted." With a crooked smirk, Eugene says saucily under his breath as an embarrassed Rapunzel gives him a wifely slap on the knee.

"What?" Eugene cringes at Rapunzel's punishing hit and simultaneously shrugs in shrewd Flynn Rider style.

Prince Kaleb had his suspicions and was quite unsure as how to treat this crass man who strangely resembled so many of their clan for his handsome classic features. But Kaleb was still grateful in his own right for the Prussian prince consort's grand act of preserving _his_ life and that of the patriarch who the Crown Prince was not as anxious to replace today as he was yesterday.

"King Agdar. To you as well, on behalf of my kingdom, my sons, I thank you for your intercedence in saving my life and my throne and its future with my heirs from this wicked monster's final act of depravity. The Danish Order of the Elephant award will be granted to you in the same ceremony we'll perform later at the Chapel." King Herbert, once he regains his stronger heart's depleted breath, was feeling rather benevolent to award this mysterious Norwegian ruler the decorated medal his nation bestowed to foreign heads of state.

"It is an honor to meet you at last, your Majesty. I consider us blessed to have been in the vicinity of your grand kingdom to be able to have been of assistance to Norway's friend and ally in your time of need." Queen Idun swiftly steps up to fill in the ominous blanks her cool, at times damnably unsociable spouse left open as he broodingly silent, merely gave King Herbert an unfriendly, frosty, passing nod.

"Come, children. Let us all adjourn to the Creator's great outdoors and away from this old sepulcher's stench of death stagnant damp air." King Herbert, feeling the need for fresh air, invites the others to follow him through the glass shattered large landscape window of his throne room that overlooked Egeskov's scenic Fuchsia Garden. Without a shred of anger or resentment at the destruction of his age-old royal edifice, Herbert invites the stunned crowd gathered to follow him outside.

Two by two, Herbert's princely sons collect their reconciled wives – those who had come down to the court from the galley - on their arms to join this most interesting start of a quite unexpected day's foray.

"But Father, you mustn't! That formidable Beast is still out there." Prince Kaleb airs his fearful reservations for his parent, causing Herbert to smile at his oldest son's fretful nature.

"Oh, Kaleb. You worry too—Oh! Yes, I see your point, my boy. I had forgotten the Great Beast." Amid all the violence and soul-searching revelations for he and his children, Marshmallow had slipped Herbert's mind.

King Herbert's gaze then turns to the Norwegian couple quietly huddled together basking in the sun just outside the throne room where the lovely Swedish woman was singing a religious hymn.

"A-hem. King Agdar, do pardon me for interrupting." The elder King apologizes as he leans out of the demolished decorative window. "But for the sake of the ladies, may I request your magnificent Snow Beast out there to move back further to the countryside to allow my already shaken family to pass without incident?"

From where Idun had been warming her defrosting husband in the morning sun, just as Agdar was itching to turn on his icy heel to check up on his yet absent elder child, King Herbert in all his Royal Kingly naval uniform finery, unwittingly intercepts him.

The older monarch claims the attention of the worried younger father before Herbert or any of his sons dare step from the destroyed Palladium landscape window and onto the Danish countryside embankment by the edge of the moat.

"Oh yes. Yes. Do stand down, Snow Beast." An exhausted Agdar offhandedly orders in his icy mental fatigue up to Marshmallow in a low lofty voice. Although, he hardly expected the thirty foot tall gargantuan made of snow and ice to take his command so literally to go down with a massive _**FLOP**_ **!**

The reverberating action of which **,** immediately at the Ice King'spertinent instruction, startles most of the ladies, just returning to their senses, to scream.

"Please forgive his uncouth gruffness. Our friend, Marshmallow, does not usually interact with citizens." Queen Idun apologizes with a queenly smile up to calm the huge snowman as well as the people below.

"This _fearsome_ **Snow Beast** is actually my daughter Elsa's creation _\- and her personal bodyguard_ \- should anyone dare malign her, or her kingdom." Giving his wife a warning glance, Agdar rather boasts with the not so veiled threat, as his eyes anxiously direct back at the Egeskov busted open full-size window.

To his knowledge, neither Elsa nor that upstart young Prince Hans had yet emerged with the rest of the Danish Royal family entourage streaming out of the battered throne room.

"Please excuse me, Your Majesty." Far too anxious to be as polite as his noble status should in visiting a fellow monarch, paternally disturbed Agdar could be patient no longer as he courteously begs pardon to return hurriedly back inside the disrupted throne room.

"But… Agdar? Wait! Will your Snow Beast be amenable if we wish to stroll by it, without your supervision?" When the younger King rudely walks away, King Herbert directs his whispers to a shrugging King Friedrich. The Prussian leader, more likened to Herbert's age, had joined him after a stumbled climb from the crashed apart window's ledge to join the al fresco jaunt almost resulted in a roll down the hillside, had Rapunzel and Eugene not thwarted the portly King's descent with Franz and Peiter's unexpected, but appreciated help.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about Mister Marshmallow! He's a great big softy!" Little Lukas had followed the troupe, who were somewhat perplexed or being annoyed by Olaf. The friendly snowman just wanted to give every one of Hans' brothers and sisters-in-law big hugs in greeting.

A smiling Olaf was sure to stop each before admittance on their exit from the Throne Room onto the path leading to the ornate Fuchsia Garden like a ticket master at an amusement park.

"Just like Mister Olaf! Only bigger!" Lukas impresses King Herbert and all of his sons – particularly Prince Ivers – by boldly racing across the manicured lawn to the Snow Beast. To prove his point, Lukas gives the sullen, displeased to have been ejected monstrous bodyguard a great big hug to one of Marshmallow's frosty toes, resulting in a friendly ticklish chortle from the gargantuan.

"Hi there, Mister Marshmallow! Can the Snowgies come out and play now? I want to show my new friends to everybody!" Lukas said the magic word, making a sad Marshmallow smile broadly now. The center of attention now, the Snow Beast bends over to unleash from his many hidden door compartment's a horde of happy faced Snowgies that bounce down with a fiesta of joy. Each one wished to gain the attention of any number of the fine ladies and gentlemen of Egeskov's bewildered court with their amusing antics.

"This one likes me! If I asked Ms. Elsa, do think she'll let me take him home, Mama? Where's Mama? Have you seen her, Princess Marguerite?" Lukas personally carries over the smallest little, shy snowgie Olaf had named 'Wilhelm' to blush a fluttered snowgie eyelid and pick a fuchsia flower from Egeskov's replete Fuchsia Gardens the Royal group were strolling through to sweetly offer the golden blonde, tall French beauty.

From the gallery Marguerite had sent word for her ladies' maid to join them from her duties downstairs when she saw Lukas had entered with the King.

"I think we all want to take you home, mon cherie, Lukas. _N'est-ce pas,_ Daphne?" The previously sullen and unhappy blonde woman turns to smile broadly when her plump little maid, helping the other servants set up for the garden party nearby, comes running up with a relieved expression on her usually pleasant features.

With a cheerful smile of her plump cheeks, Daphne gratefully hugs her boy as tall and slender Marguerite wraps an arm around them both.

"Look, Ivers. It is time we brought our 'godson' home. We will have plenty of room in that big empty palace in Fredericksburg. In the Summers we go to gay Paris to visit my Papere's home for your summits, mon chere! And, Lukas, if you ask her very nicely, and her Majesty Queen Elsa permits, this little fellow can join us in the winters we'll visit here in Egeskov with the family. How do you like the sound of that, my sweet little blue eyed boy?" Marguerite's heart was overflowing with the joy of knowing the small boy's heart was big enough to love her as a dear friend. And maybe, after a lifetime spent cherishing one another, he might consider her like a secondary mother perhaps, too.

Her dear Ivers would not have the terrible secret to haunt their lives anymore if she embraced this blessed chance, truthfully out in the open with all her heart.

After all, who could not welcome such a beautiful little boy as Lukas, and the joy of watching his precious life – however low it had begun – that brought such heights of happiness to others?

"Shall we explain our good news of our new family to your Father, Ivers, dear? I think he would not be too adverse to the miracle of such a sweet child anymore. The first male heir in the Westergaard family, ne c'est pas ( _Is it not_?)? I am ready, if you are, mon chere, to stand by your side, and support you always." Marguerite's lovely eyes were full of love for him and the pleasure of this happy moment that she never wanted to pass with her husband's warm hand as her steady security. The French Princess glances over to where previously cold and rough King Herbert seemed to be basking in this beautiful end this summer day.

"Yes, my love. Finally I am ready to face the truth." After a gentle nod of complete understanding to his beneficent friend Daphne, Ivers meets Marguerite's eyes with his astonishing blue ones with a kiss to her high-bone cheek.

A kiss full of adoration for her generous love and a new pride he never thought at the cheerful little boy playing innocently with the snowgies along the Danish countryside, just enjoying the simple joys of life the Lord blessed him with, without a care in the world.

* * *

 _ **Still inside the Throne Room…**_

As Kristoff and Sven stopped to help some of the men lift heavy fallen objects, Anna impertinently shimmied and twisted her way through the growing crowd of the more stout-hearted Princesses, with an impressed Antoinetta drooling openly at her heroic Didrik, excitable Lujza helping strong Peiter attend to his Father, and community organizer Elisabeth, at Mattias' side, taking the lead in the clean-up effort in the mix.

"Elsa!" The ginger haired girl kneels down to where Didrik and Jurgen were just getting to removing some of the blown apart pieces of the wooden witness stand that had landed atop Hans' legs where the courageous redhead had hurriedly dived to pull Elsa to safety.

"Perhaps you should go and check with your lovely cousin Princess Rapunzel over there, for a while, until we men get this mess sorted out." Taking an obstructive view stance in front of where the platinum blonde Ice Queen had utilized her ice powers to spin his little brother flat onto his back and then had tilted the Red's head back to lift Hans' chin for a quick kiss of life breath, ladies man Didrik expertly maneuvers a snooping Anna around so she could not see what was going on behind him.

"Princess Anna of Arendelle, is it not? What a sweet name for such a sweet little girl. Your sister Elsa and I have become _intimate_ friends in her short time here. But this is no place for a lady with delicate sensibilities." Didrik was dangerously flirtatious by nature, even in front of his wife who was too enthralled with him to take offense for once or be too mortified by the mayhem as her fan waved a cool, air-clearing breeze for his courageous clean-up effort proudly. She knew that his glib boasting about the conquest of a queen that never happened was all part of her man's captivating bravado.

The Queen of Norway had her sights elsewhere, jealous Princess Antoinetta of Spain was pleased to acknowledge, as she watches, in hushed enthrallment, skimpily dressed Queen Elsa's brassy boldness as Elsa scandalously 'ravaged' Didrik's insensible little brother.

 _Perhaps my Didrik will appreciate those audacious advances on him later tonight…_

The Ice Queen was now applying some emergency, fast pressed, rhythmic compression pushes to Hans' unresponsive chest with her delicate hands placed one atop the other. But Anna, try as she might on fought for tippy-toes, could not see past 6' 3" tall, dark and devastatingly handsome Prince Didrik's charismatically smirking features.

"No way, Handsome! There's nothing delicate about me." Anna didn't fall for the tall, dark and moustached man's outward charms, nor was she tricked by his suave attempt to waylay her.

The dapper man who was currently sporting a pair of black eyes - _one of which the brother he was purposefully shielding was responsible for_ \- had placed his hands on the peppery girl's shoulders to halt her urgent approach.

Somehow, Prince Didrik had proven himself to be a better brother than any of his clan had been to Hans, as he tries now to buy Elsa some time from prying eyes where the long-legged beauty was at Hans' side ministering.

"Ex-ccuusse me!" But Didrik gains Anna's indignant growl up at him, as she shakes him off like so much refuse, with dagger eyes. Undeterred, he and the ginger girl do a little bit of a back and forth dance as the wily charmer does his best to provide timely cover for the new couple who had so impressed him personally with their deep caring for one another.

"Don't say I didn't warn you." Didrik shrugs with a coy smirk over his shoulder down at the couple just finishing being locked in a mouth-to-mouth 'kiss' where Elsa, at his side, was breathlessly leaning over Hans' prone – but alive - form on the ground. Her lips sealed to his, Elsa had been frantically blowing her rescue breaths into his mouth until Hans' chest began to visibly rise.

"He's weird." Anna shakes her head and continues on. "Oops, my bad." Anna apologizes after she clumsily steps on someone's hand in her haste. Luckily, she only momentarily glanced down to see the dismembered hand that once had six fingers and no longer had an owner - _Yuck_! - a second before arriving at Elsa's side.

Plowing through the frost and dust covered rubble, a scrunched nose Anna _indelicately_ kicks away several indistinguishable body parts to clear a path to where Elsa was now sitting up. Her arms were wrapped around Hans like a he was a vulnerable baby as she pulled him on her icy lap.

"Elsa! Are you okay!?" Anna pivots to her caring little sister mode, skidding across the floor on her knees at her Elsa's side.

"…Hans… Hmmm? Oh, Anna!" Anna's big sister was panting, but the braided girl could see the distressed Queen of Arendelle was thankfully physically intact as she came up from her lips pressed down one more time to the man on the floor beneath her.

"Hey-ey! Were you two kissing all this time!? Elsa! What's going on?!" A shocked, bug-eyed Anna squeaks, having the foresight to whisper, at Kristoff's thought-intruding advice to tone it down, lest alert her nearby parents.

The intuitive mountainman had taken a page from the tall handlebar mustache man's playbook to have been using his own broad-shouldered form to obscure the guilty-looking pair of lip-lockers the anxious sister now stumbles upon.

"Anna…" Elsa, too weak in voice to speak, manages to smile wanly to her little sister. Anna rubs her chilly arms as Elsa trembles to pause and swallow for breath before explaining.

"You see, Anna, when everything was so chaotic after that dreadful explosion, I came to, and I was immediately terrified to find Hans not moving. He had protected me from the blast and I panicked because I could not wake him." Elsa says as she cradles her hero on her lap, grateful that he was, freely breathing.

"It was so dark and smoky and people were screaming, I didn't know what to do. Then, I prayed. All at once, I was inspired to use Hans' method to give him life-giving breath, as he once did for me. Then I felt his breath in mine, and his body became warm. I hope it was enough." Elsa lovingly pets Hans' sideburns with a troubled caress, her eyes lifted up to the Great Healer Above for His presence.

" _Praying_ told you to kiss Hans, huh? I guess, he _is_ breathing…" With a smirk at her belief in a holy power in this matter too, Anna takes it all in with a tender touch of her own.

She checks the lifesigns of the red-headed Danish Prince she once thought she loved, then thought she despised.

And now…?

"Okay, Red! Party's over! That guy blew himself to smithereens all over the room, so he's, like, gonesville. So, you can get up off my sister's lap now." Anna was never her Mama or Kai's best student when in came to the art of tactful conversation, as she turns her attentions to removing Hans from Elsa's proximity before her chilly probing Papa returned to his search.

"C'mon! Papa's out there with Mama trying to calm him down! Everyone's already gathered outside but you two, so he's freaking out! Let's go!" Anna warns impatiently, trying to get Elsa motivated with the threat of Papa's wrath and she leans down to hiss in Hans' breathing, yet unresponsive ear.

"…Oh, Snowflake…you **do** like to kiss me…" But this just causes the delirious young officer to stir and turn over to be face down and murmuring hallucinations on a blushing Elsa's mortified, yet gratified lap.

Hans' desiring lips nuzzle at Elsa's lower waist, right through her melting ice dress where his head rested in her pleasurably shocked embrace.

"Hey! Stop that! Did the blast blow out your hearing?! I said: Move it, Red!" Annoyed Anna boldly smacks Hans right across his tight backside buns facing her in punishment where the overtly romantic young man was rambling sweet nothings as he lay on the ground.

 _ **Cough! Cough! Cough!**_

Hans, waking up in a rather flustered state of ecstasy, has Anna's butt-smacking wakeup call as an excuse to finally pull his aroused mind away from Elsa Bernadotte's provocative lips he was still dreaming of.

"Hans! Are you all right?" Elsa's exotic eyes were all over him as Hans awakens, panting and choking.

"…Elsa…Are you unharmed? Why am I so breathless? Anna? I don't know what happened. I only intended to shield your – _huff_ – sister from the blast." Hans timidly blushes all the way up and down his side-burned cheeks, with shame written all over his cute features, despite his shortness of breath that Elsa left him in for the ferocity of the kiss of life she so willingly imparted to him.

"I'm fine, thanks to you." She meets his anxious gaze with an entrancing one of her own, as her fingers consciously twist the sparkling, intricate snowflake diamond, sapphire, and blue topaz gemstone ring gleaming through the dusky court on her left hand ring finger with secret pride.

 _So that's the one!_

"Oh, that's right. He's your _fiancé_ now." With less bitter sarcasm in that sentence than she intended directed down at this contemptible man who had been Elsa's self-sacrificing savior so many times it was hard for Anna to deny he genuinely cared.

After all the devotion she glimpsed in his childhood secret attic hideaway, Anna realized that she herself was never to be the one to rightfully wear Hans Westergaard's ring.

"Anna! You know?" After quickly making a vain attempt to conceal her guilty left hand, Elsa felt caught in the act by the one person in the world she loved too much to let this new sentiment of love for her charming prince get in the way of their sisterly relationship.

"Isn't it obvious?!" Standing to her feet, Anna accuses the couple she had been propping up, now leaning to one another's strength on the dusty floor, with a pointed finger down at them.

"I just have one question, Red!" Anna belligerently whispers, poking Hans in the chest hard after Kristoff helped both he and Elsa up to stand as well.

" _ **Why**_ didn't _**I**_ get a crack at _**that**_ ring two years ago, _**Mister**_!?" The glowering look on Anna's cute face was not nearly as threatening as she would have liked.

"…Alas…Forgive me, but you were not my beautiful Snowflake, Anna." A swaying, unsteady on his feet Hans responds in a dizzy delirium that allowed him the audacity to reach out and brush back Elsa's mussed errant bang back to her forehead with an palpable gaze of love in his green eyes.

And to Anna's horror, though in some weird way she expected it, Elsa responds with a smiling light touch to her hero's cheek, as she displayed proudly in her other hand his engagement promise upon her delicate finger.

"Well…you'd better break up the goo-goo eyes now! Papa's coming, and he's not in the best mood!" Anna whispers urgently like a true little sister worrying for her extravagant big sis' romantic entanglement with a warning of their possessive Papa's approach.

"Oh!" Elsa quickly pulls herself together, fixing first a gratified Hans' then her own askew hair as she places her clenched hands on her pounding chest to regain her stolen breath to meet Anna's eyes.

Kristoff then quickly begins to move the quartet of them outside with the others, Queen Arianna there to beckon the quartet out into the garden with a big welcoming smile. That's when Papa Agdar finally catches up with his daughters, his long strides cutting across the filled Fuchsia Garden with his healing wife trailing his rude departure from the King of Denmark.

"Elsa! Anna!" Agdar's bass voice bellows across the distance to his children in relief.

"I suppose I have you to thank – _again_ – for defending my daughter's welfare in times of danger." King Agdar speaks to the royal man standing behind his Snow Angel princess after Idun's pinch of his reluctant arm.

"Even if you _had_ **_abandoned_** your post." The protective father jealously adds this stinging aside in a bass voice so low that only Hans was intended to hear.

"I take that responsibility as my highest duty as a man, and as your Vise Admiral, King Agdar…That is, if the position still stands for me in your admirable Fleet's service. Unless you have appointed someone more befitting…now that the initial crisis is over…Either way, I thank you for the honor of serving in your fine Navy, Sir." His portentous speechifying breath regained, Hans modestly states with all the respect and honor the King preferred in any young gentleman officer of his.

Of course, that didn't mean the King approved of Elsa entertaining this Dane _– heroic or not_ \- with a questionable past as a serious beau for his eldest child.

Idun sensed Agdar's somewhat disapproving cool stare sent deeply insecure sentiments straight through Hans' uncertain being.

"What's this I hear, Agdar? Have you employed a Prince of this realm and officer of the Søværnet to be in your Navy and at such a high rank? Oh, yes, boy! That **is** the uniform of a Sjoforsvaret elevated officer!" Looking his svelte son up and down with sincere interest for the first time in Hans' life, a pleased Herbert overhears the conversation with more than a concerned ear now for his blushing youngest son's happiness and security.

Particularly if it was to be a shared destiny with this incredible young woman named 'Elsie'.

"My husband chose Prince Hans to serve as his Vise Admiral, only second-in-rank to the King, for service to Norway above and beyond the call of duty." With all attention on the young Dane, Queen Idun pipes up after covering up Elsa's smudged lipstick behind her husband's back. The petite Queen hoped her inattentive mate would not see the match of its singular color on young Hans' guilty lips.

"Did you not, Agdar?" His wily Queen paints her man in a corner that would be hard to walk back from before this regal King of a neighboring nation and several of his attentive sons.

"Yes. It is as my wife said. I have seen fit to appoint your son Prince Hans as my… _gulp_ …Vise Admiral—for his gallantry in battle in defense of our beloved homeland." King Agdar tries to justify himself and save face as he responds to King Herbert's inquisitive – yet no longer unkind – eyes.

"Then I thank you again for recognizing my youngest lad's worth, even before his own Father was able to see it." King Herbert says as he leans against Prince Ivers' arm, granting a shocked, bewildered and blushing Hans another merciful smile.

"And most of all, I thank you for the privilege of meeting your extraordinary daughter, Queen Elsa. This young woman's determination to believe in someone with unwavering faith in a Higher Power who has blessed her with those special gifts – and you as well, it appears – has changed my life, my sons' lives, and consequently that of every one of my subjects in my kingdom henceforth, with her honest truth and fearless God-given stance for what is right." Herbert meets Elsa's shy eyes.

"King Agdar, if I may tell you, your Elsa has been a God-sent treasure to me. She alone had the courage to remind this foolish King, before it was too late, what the true meaning of love is all about, that an old man had almost forgotten, on this, his 70th year." With heartfelt tears in his deep blue eyes. King Herbert moves to where a blushing Elsa was standing within her mother's arms at Hans' side.

"Your Majesty, you are too kind." Elsa answers graciously as her eyes begin to tremble in the shared soulful gaze of understanding new beginnings offered under the all forgiving compassion of the One who breaks hearts of stone to give us hearts of love alone.

"She has been like a daughter to me. The good daughter I never had, my life enriched for knowing her blessing that showed me that I had one more child who deserved to be loved." Herbert's grateful eyes travel from where Elsa was standing in the embrace of her proud, loving parents, to where a wide-eyed, gazing down to the ground in disbelief Prince Hans was standing behind.

"Welcome home, my Son." King Herbert swallows his great pride to admit, his resentment melting in the warmth of the morning as his eyes connect with an emotional, nodding Hans' glossy green ones.

Surpassing her shy and withdrawn, usually reserved self for a brief moment of Grace, Elsa stands on her ice heels' tippy toes to plant a tender, thankful kiss onto King Herbert's angelically surprised, yet devilishly pleased cheek, much to everyone surrounding's bewilderment.

With a hearty chuckle at that gentle kiss from this special lady fair, the very final vestige of that cold mirror shard of Good and Evil dissolves entirely from the pierced heart of King Herbert of the Southern Isles where it has resided for the past fifty years.

So, with no more ill will and wicked spirits supplanting him with their vile thoughts, holding him back from the light with his power hungry ambitions, Herbert could look up to the clear blue morning sky with all his _fourteen_ sons at his side.

Honestly, with a noble, unfettered heart, the Danish King could feel the gentle warm morning breeze kiss upon his cheek.

And for once in very, very long time, Herbert was certain that it was his sweet, soft Louise up there in quiet gratitude for her hope fulfilled, who had bestowed this blessed, tender breeze's warm sunshine kiss upon him..

* * *

Søværnet – Royal Danish Navy

min alskare – my darling in Swedish

ne c'est pas - Is it not? in French

Sjoforsvaret – Royal Norwegian Navy

* * *

Happy New Year, Frozen friends!

Please review what you thought of all this chapter's action/ drama/ intrigue/ romance and fun! (Not to mention the definite last appearance/ gory demise of this sequel's main villain, evil, manipulative, scarface Count Rügen!)

Hey, he deserved it for all the years of cruelty and torture to our Hans and his Father and brethren, right?

I hope you enjoyed all the twists and turns to titillate our imaginations on this first day of the New Year!

God bless you all as we head into this beautiful & exciting New Year!

Jesus' Love all through the year,

HarukaKou

P.S. Thanks to my Guest reviewer, Ms. Logic, for the heads-up on the correct mouth-to-mouth resuscitation procedure steps. I went back and cleared up any confusion as to Elsa's life-saving kiss of her handsome Prince Hans, so as no one in real life would mimic the Ice Queen not applying the proper rhythmic pressure in the right placement, etc.

You're right, my Frozen friend. We can never be too cautious as to how we address such an important vital life-sustaining subject. Thank you for your noble concern and compassion for you're the health of your fellow man.

-HarukaKou ^_^

Hope you read my revisions again! Thanks for the help! :) It's much appreciated.


	26. Chapter 26 - Sun of My Soul

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 26**

 **"Sun of My Soul"**

After declaring himself ' _hungrier than I've been in ages'_ in the midst of the populated Fuchsia Garden, King Herbert of the Southern Isles exchanges a cordial nod to King Friedrich and King Agdar, followed by a deep bow to Queen Elsa as he was moved towards the Garden Party where several of the royal guests were gathered in curiosity of the early morning events even before breakfast was served.

With a handsome smile buried beneath his long grey beard, Herbert jovially invites these unanticipated visitors to join he and his family for the all-day birthday fête and subsequent soirée that his daughter-in-law, Emma, no doubt had in store for him. He directs them to watch in amusement the proper, oh-so-British woman assail his domineered eldest son Kaleb to comply, as she fidgets to and fro with the disturbed stream of servants in her wake, determined to keep the birthday party for the King as scheduled, chaotic early morning melee or no.

"It appears the celebration is still in order then. May I say, my entire kingdom is at your daughter's every whim, Agdar. She seems to have had free reign over my Egeskov these past few days and it has only benefited from her tender, yet assiduous hand." As Elsa's cheeks redden at all these accolades, Herbert turns his attention to King Agdar who nods with a tentative, serious smile in return to this once harsh, unfriendly ruler of Denmark. The Norwegian King, on his contented wife's calming arm, gives his elder girl an unconcealed gaze of pride that made a pleased Elsa blush yet again.

"Come now, let us pause for some much needed coffee and provender from the refreshment table that my goodly and perceptive, loyal servants seemed to have already begun to prepare. These warm, caffeinated drinks should sustain us older persons before we partake in the morning's church services in our humble Egeskov Chapel." Dutiful Prince Kaleb leads his father by the arm towards the aforementioned refreshments his wife Emma and many quick-footed maids and servants had set up, pending the King and his entourage's slow walk past through the English Garden's huge lawn of vast shading trees to the immediate rear left of the castle.

After giving Olaf and Marshmallow gently playing with Lukas and the children in the fields a responsible, satisfied look, Elsa shyly steals a glance back towards Hans when her father's attention was elsewhere.

But when the embarrassed Prince - surrounded by a bevy of his now encouraging sisters-in-law and their curious hesitant mates around their 'prodigal Squirrel' of a previously persona non grata brother - refused to meet her inquiring gaze, Elsa lets out a small sigh.

"Race you to the hot cocoa ad warm oatmeal cookies?" Sweet in spirit and tooth alike, Princess Anna's sprightly voice interjects through her big sister's tentative frame of mind with an empathetic grin shared. Her big aquamarine eyes direct Elsa's especially towards the sight of hot cookies being served at the table ahead.

 _You always know when I need a sisterly warm hand to hold, Anna…_

The sun shining on Anna's ginger hair caused her to have a halo glow all around her little sis in Elsa's eyes. So with a grateful, wispy smile, the shivering Ice Queen gladly accepts her vibrant sibling's palm that was generously offered.

Hand in squeezed hand, Elsa and Anna, two sisters who both had such a fascinating connection to a certain Prince of the Southern Isles. Despite his newfound popularity, Prince Hans was watching their every step from a proper, safe distance. His eyes traced Elsa's sleek lines as she and Anna now follow their parents to have morning tea and coffee with the _Danes,_ of all people.

* * *

 _ **Still left inside the Throne Room**_ …

As most of the Danish royal princes followed their father outside, normally meek Big Nose of Snuggly Duckling fame had self-consciously kept his head low as he entered through the window crashed-open castle's throne room that he had the privilege of escorting Queen Idun of Arendelle in through earlier.

Scavenging about the vacated Egeskov throne room not so long after the frightening, destructive scene, Big Nose glances around at all the disarray in alarm as he holds a bulgy hand to his shaking head.

"Oy vey!"

The bulbous nosed Snuggly Duckling patron finds his poor old father huddled behind the witness stand partition, still shivering and unnoticed. He and his bride Hilde and his two sisters, whom the Snow Prince had sent Svala and Snaedis as flying transport to collect earlier, had been searching the wrecked royal room area desperately for their missing parent.

"Aged P! What happened!? Are you hurt? All that smoke and dust is bad for your sinusitis! Let's get you out of here, _Tatti_ (Daddy)! Can you walk? Is there a medic around!?" Big Nose wished that Bruiser and Killer were nearby. However, his therapeutic Snuggly Duckling brethren weren't the first on Maximus' fast speed express route from the nearby local Kvaerndrup tavern that the King's men had taken the raucous foreign reprobates to get them out of the way.

Not much further into the putrid smelling room, the scattered, self-massacred remnants of what was once the Count of Württemberg were being cleaned up by Captain Jorgensen's men who arrived to round up the remainder of the evil villain's minions.

The lead lawful authority left in the room was trying to keep some semblance of order in the bedlam with the help of his visiting fellow Captain of the Prussian guard, Schmidt.

"Hey, you! Stay away from that old man! He's still a prisoner of the court!" Holding his slipping skirt wrap around his manly hips more securely, stiff-necked Captain Jorgensen orders his men from across the room when he notices Big Nose and siblings moving old Aged P out towards the blown out window.

But before the barrage of dutiful corporals in the King's Danish Guard can reach the limping old man and his worried children, a woman's low, sultry voice intercedes.

"This elderly jeweler's hardly a dangerous felon for so many tall, dark and strong soldiers to panic over."

An arresting-eyed, striking woman wearing a not very feminine, grayish orchid outfit that gave her a brazen attitude, steps her tall black boots that matched her elbow length leather gauntlets, over the broken window ledge and into the disorganized throne room.

She halts the guardsmen in their tracks as they all stop to stare at her striking, arm crossed provocative pose towards the law enforcers and their Prussian-Jewish family targets.

"C'mon, boys. Cut the old geezer some slack. He'll be under my – oh, do pardon me _—Captain Schmidt_ of the Royal Corona Guard's personal care, until this matter is cleared up." The charcoal and highlighted grey-violet haired woman with a no-nonsense, short wavy style coos with an even mix of brashness and insolence laced with cunning behind her heavy eyelids up at Corona's Captain of the Guard.

"Besides, our Mr. Porcius may be suffering from a concussion now due to your _inept_ courtroom security protocol. There may even be grounds for legal proceedings here. Plus, we _do_ have _heavy_ laws for defamatory slander against reputable businessman in Corona. Our courts will have to look into your extradition charges that may even be questionable in this matter." She turns her saucy attention upon a skeptical Captain Jorgensen with a legal counter-dispute pointedly threatened.

"Wouldn't you agree, Captain Schmidt?" Disrespectfully addressing the older man as she saunters up to Corona's head lawman, the mysterious, dark-haired young woman named Cassandra was no stranger to challenging the authority of all men around her.

In fact, the woman who had become Princess Rapunzel's handmaiden and closest confidante over the past seven years reveled in making them squirm.

 _Especially my Father…_ Though she'd be loathe to admit it, Cassandra admired her hard-hitting, dogged soldier of a father in his persistent job. She secretly had a hankering to be just as capable as a man in uniform all her life since the law enforcement officer had adopted her. Although, her parent wanted her to grow up to be a _lady_ , Cassandra had learned how to handle dangerous weapons of all types and had become proficient in agility and combat, under the disguise of that white veiled sweet little ladies' maid dress.

The tough-as-nails, experienced female often exercised her powers over this tall, dark and moustached Prussian man who had served as Captain of the Guard of Corona for as long as she could remember. _Lady_ Cassandra knew exactly how to play the chords of her traditionalist, square jawed parent who had taught her much about the art of combat.

But the art of out-foxing a fox was where Cassandra added her own flair.

"Uh, yes. That is, Yes! Indeed! Mr. Agapios Porcius is an upstanding member of Bavaria's reputable business society. He will be treated with respect in this foreign court, should King Friedrich even choose to allow this fiasco to continue, after our citizen's unlawful seizure from our land." Acting all in charge, Captain Schmidt yet again falls for his adopted daughter Cassandra's incisive powers of persuasion, not to mention her intense catty eyes that had the ability to bewitch him to no end.

 _Hook, line and sinker, Dad._ Cassandra's thick magenta lips curl into a wide smirk, her dexterous hands resting on the dagger hilt attached to her shapely hip, knowing she had influence over her father to do what she wanted.

Rapunzel gives her friend a thumbs-up from the garden area where the petite Prussian Princess was peeking back through. The brown-bob-haired girl already glimpsed her confidante of a ladies maid in the garden outside when she watches Captain Jorgensen permit Captain Schmidt and his newly arrived, blunt-spoken daughter to allow Aged P and kin begin to exit freely.

* * *

"Remind your old Aged P to never handle another piece of jewelry without checking with one of my kin on the proper carat and Schrauf's rule jewel worth that me decrepit old eyes failed me on this time. And cause all this plotz ( _trouble_ ). Ay yai yai." With a smoke and dust filled cough and wheeze, Aged P's bugged-out peepers that rarely saw the light of day beyond his missing eyepiece, blink up to his son and daughters with a squint.

The Bavarian jeweler's critical eye magnification tool must have been knocked off in the close proximity grenade's violent explosion.

"Well, don't worry about that now, Aged P! My sisters and I have worked like mad all day and night this past week to bring to you an exact duplicate of your original design of that particular high purity ring's intricate ordered setting. Look, look! We even managed to locate some first-water quality brilliants that Cousin Tiffanous, here in our Danish branch office in Schleswig-Holstein, supplied. See, here it is!" Brooklyn accented Big Nose beckons for his surprisingly pretty two younger sisters who had traveled by the Snow Queen's flying horse Snaedis from Corona to Schleswig to here.

Masterful Wind Whisperer Kristoff had mentally sent the flying steed to them, in order to subvert a lot of grief and deliver a new genuine diamond engagement ring to replace the faulty one Prince Rune's finicky fiancé declined.

And when a just-returned-from-her-trip-to-the-Far-East Lady Cassandra had shown up at the Snuggly Duckling looking for Rapunzel, the royal family, and her father Captain Schmidt on the side, just before the harried Porcius sisters left, there was no question as to the domineering, gutsy woman tagging along for the ride.

" _Mekhaye, Kinder_! (Wonderful, children!) Let me see…hmm… Now if only I had my eyepiece, so as I can take a proper gander at this marvelous ingenuity made of my good children's love for their old klutz of a father." Aged P drops to his wobbly hands and knobbly knees in a frantic search of the missing eyepiece he was nearly blind without, after growing accustomed to wearing the magnification tool for most of his ripened old life.

But amid all the chaotic mess and people streaming in from the Castle and down from the galley to lend their assistance, the odds of finding the delicate jeweler's tool in tact was growing less likely.

With a sigh, Big Nose and his little sisters, Esther and Rebekah, also drop to their knees and begin to search through the dust laden ground to sift through the rubble of the Danish court's broken up marble floor to help their parent look for his missing eyepiece, but to no avail.

That's when another entrant back into the dilapidated throne room interrupts.

"You should be down on your knees, old timer! Just because this all happened, don't think you're off the hook, yet! I don't care what your King said! I still haven't been satisfied as a good faith paying customer! Your incompetence has probably cost me the hand of the love of my life! A life you probably destroyed now without my precious Russian jewel named Eugenia beside me…" Waxing poetic in his despair, Prince Rune, collects himself and his interrupted case after a few moments of shock at this melee. He had not forgotten about his personal grievance with the elderly Prussian jeweler as he comes storming back into the topsy-turvy Egeskov courtroom.

Rune's ruddy face goes even redder with his hot and bothered anger. The irked eleventh in line Prince stands above the strange Bavarian group, quite flustered as he shakes his fist down at Aged P and his family.

"What are you people all scrounging on the floor for down here?!" The bad tempered Prince was too exasperated by their en masse ignorance to keep snootily standing his ground. So he drops to the floor when they all seemed to disregard him.

"Father needs his special jeweler's eyepiece to inspect this finely crafted replacement ring we are delivering for the royal Prince, Sir." Daughter Esther answers with a winning smile up at the young complainant in this fraud case, completely innocent.

"Oh, Esther! That's him! The ill-tempered Prince I was telling you about!" Big Nose's bride Hilde squeals in a frightened whisper as she gives Rebekah a frenetic squeeze of her arm before immediately covering her own ill-disciplined mouth up. But Hilde was fortunate that rude Rune rarely listened to anyone other than himself, as he goes down to the ground to help the quintet search for the magnification tool.

But search as they might, the precious jeweler's glass was no where in sight.

"Have you been you looking for this, старый отец ( _staryy Otets-_ old father)?" Yet another unexpected voice calmly inserts herself into the disorderly pandemonium with the treasured eyepiece offered from a well pedicured, delicately decorated feminine hand.

Aged P and Big Nose pause in their scavenging the rubble of the cracked marble tile grounds to look up at the uniquely unruffled, accented voice's source.

And up.

The long legged, tall Russian Princess Eugenia had been a silent witness to the conversation between Big Nose, his bride, his sisters, his father and Prince Rune, her _ex-fiancé_.

The eavesdropping snobbish Russian young woman hands Aged P the jeweler's glass he had been searching for, as Big Nose and his sisters aid their father up to his feet.

"Ah, flawless! This _**is**_ of superior quality than any I've seen in a long time! Cousin Tiffanous certainly knows his gemstones! You simply have outdone yourselves, my children! You were all paying careful attention when yer old father taught ye the ropes in our shop. Kinda makes an old man feel proud…" With a tear in his buggy eyes, Aged P never did quite grasp the urgent, 25 year long - _a life sentence for him_ \- jeopardy of his court case situation, as he gives a big gold toothy grin. He holds up this finely crafted jewel piece, paying close attention to the details of the first water diamond ring his offspring created in his stead.

"Did you hear that, Eugenia? This ring has even _better_ diamonds, of the ' _first water'_! That's the kind you like, right?!" With the hopeful enthusiasm of a spoiled child using hoity words of a language that were well beyond his understanding, Prince Rune takes the newly finished ring that passed from the daughters' to the son's to the old father's hands into his, until it finally was offered again to Eugenia.

After a few expressionless seconds when Prince Rune's tentative heart was carried in her elegant hands, Russian Crown Princess Eugenia's pursed lips part, but no sound emits from her elegantly brooch bejeweled throat.

Rune sighs in relief when those lips at last curl into a low timbered giggle at his foolhardy sweetness in trying to please her demanding whims when it came to fine jewelry.

The snobbish, dark-haired woman with the coiffed double braided bun, Princess Leia hairstyle gazes down at Rune kneeling at her feet with an amused smile.

"любовь всей моей жизни – Lyubov 'vsey moyey zhizni, Rune? I am _the_ _love of your life_ …?" She chuckles in pleasure after repeating Rune's overdramatic words from earlier in her native Russian tongue, with eyes upon the on-tenterhooks, eleventh-in-line Prince. "Fine then. I will accept this new proposal ring from you, Prince Rune, if just so this family man with the superb children can be free again to teach and work alongside them with his gifted artisan hands." Eugenia states magnanimously before Egeskov and Corona's leading lawmen who were still leading the charge in clearing up the trashed courtroom.

Captains of the Guard Jorgensen and Schmidt were listening intently to her verdict on Aged P, glad to be rid of this bothersome case.

"Besides. I do not wish to be the one to _'destroy your life'_ when I have been convinced you need _my jewel_ to fulfill it, my Prince. Agred Sir, you have my gratitude for this indeed, priceless expression of my fiancé's devotion." Her eyes laugh at Rune, as, secretly moved inside, Princess Eugenia gives Aged P an unanticipated small smile and respectful nod for his skilled work in a field she so respected.

"Come, Дорогая- _dorogaya_ – my darling, let us give our reestablished wedding announcements to your dear father for his grand birthday present as we had planned before this dilemma." Princess Eugenia links her arm in Rune's after she reclaims the ring from the lightheaded Prince. The superior Princess then drags him outside to join the others heading towards the King's decidedly happier garden party birthday celebration on this bright afternoon full of new promise.

Her little sister, Maria, who had been waiting on the sidelines as audience, energetically comes bounding up with her Tsvetnaya Bolonka doggie named Blysk to give Rune a big doggie germ lick ' _congrats'_ straight across his ruddy red cheek.

"Good job, Bolsheey brat (big brother? _huh_?)!" After receiving a quick whisper in his odd-shaped ear from his pretty little sausage-curled gal, Rune's twin Prince Ruddi massacres his best Russkie translation with a friendly punch in the arm to his triumphant twin.

Prince Ruddi's own wide-eyed Maria gives her snooty sister a thumbs-up as the teenager was giggling on her sticky-uppy haired boy's arm at the reset relationship of their stubborn elder siblings finally marching towards that fabled happy ending.

* * *

A grey owl cuts across the skies with a screech over the blown wide open wall of Egeskov's royal throne room to land on an experienced gauntlet arm, signaling a familiar new face's entrance to the scene.

"Those Norwegian kin of yours certainly know how to crash a party. And look incredibly impressive doing it, too. It's a pity your powerful Uncle is already spoken for. I had no idea the King of Norway was so mighty fine-looking a man…" That Owl's owner's drippingly cool and sassy voice that enters Egeskov's Rose Garden was very recognizable to Princess Rapunzel was indeed.

"Cassandra!? When did you get here?! I thought your vacation to the Forbidden City in China was to last another month, at least!" Rapunzel opens her arms up wide for a great big invited bear hug with her none-too-touchy-feely handmaiden.

"The ancestor's dragon wasn't as terrifying as I thought he'd be. But General Li Shang wasn't as disappointing. Now, there was a _man_ who knew how to whip into shape some sorry boys into exceptional soldiers for his sorry army. So, in my reading historical itinerary across the Great Wall through the Han Dynasty's epic battle moments, I've been here and there." Cassandra coyly shrugs off Rapunzel's sticky embrace.

"Oh, Cass, we've been through so much this past month! I wish you were there to have seen all that happened with my cousins Elsa and Anna! We discovered their lost parents! There were pirates and subterfuge and mystic powered relics and flying horses and the Snow Queen herself!" Pausing only for breath, Rapunzel giggles with girlish glee up at her tall ladies' companion who missed out on this adventure.

"Yes. I have come to understand your escapades. But with all due respect, Your Highness, I think I've been away from home long enough." The charcoal grey, crimped haired woman comments drolly at sunshiny Rapunzel's effusive excess when it came to telling a tale.

"Eugene's long lost father turned out to be the Danish King, and his little brother Prince Hans has been accepted by his father and brothers and – oh! – there's so many of them, now we have a gignormous family! Like I always dreamed! And I'm going to have twins! Isn't it all so grand?!" The almost four-month pregnant Prussian princess coos as she holds her growingly full stomach. To tough-guy Cassandra, the sighing girl only extolled the virtue of remaining a bachelorette to hear her friend go all sugary sweet in her bubbling over profusely about her exciting adventure the sticky gal was quickly relaying to the handmaiden.

Way too much saccharine for the tall, dark female as a smirking Lady Cassandra approaches Corona's Crown Princess and her sneak thief faux prince. But Flynn Rider's rival for Rapunzel's ear gets a kick out of seeing Eugene's stubbly jaw nearly fall off at his jubilant wife's latest revelation. Cassandra herself had already been informed of Rapunzel's pregnancy as close confidante in its first stage just before her trip.

Though the independent woman may not have looked as forward to the idea of another child - _beyond Flynn Rider_ \- hanging around the castle now too, she did enjoy watching Mr. Fitherbert squirm at the notion.

"Twins, Sunshine!?" _GULP_ "Isn't _**one**_ messy, noisy, sticky bundle of joy at a time keeping us up all-hours-of-the night-needing-constant-diaper-change enough?!" Obviously, expectant daddy Eugene Fitzherbert had been considering his future life with a child to crowd in it, as he puts a humorous, exasperated high register spin on this new terrifying subject his lovely wife broached so giddily.

"Hmph. I thought you'd be a natural at handling a load like _that_ , Fitzherbert." Sarcastic Cassandra places her own talented hands on her hips with laughing grey eyes and a glossy twisted lip on her mocking face.

"Ha, Ha. You're a riot, Grey." Eugene's lowered eyelids answer her scorn flatly with his nickname for everything about the woman that reminded him of that drab color. "I happen to soon-to-be on the receiving end of a multitude of royal awards for my heroism and incomparable bravery after saving my Pops - FYI: the _King of the Southern Isles'_ – life from that vengefully deranged villain who came to an explosive end." Eugene showboats to his not-so-impressed verbal sparring partner as he saucily gets right in her face.

"Speaking of diaper duty… _cough cough_!...Phew! What a pong! You'd better get yourself cleaned up, you filthy man, before those hoity-toity people evict you from their garden party." Taking an olfactory offended step back away from Eugene as she pinches her nose closed with her gloved fingers, Cassandra makes a disgusted face at the stench of death's drying blood and expelled bile that the suicide grenade had eviscerated Count Rügen's body parts to splatter all over the back tunic of Flynn Rider.

After all, the heroically award ceremony deserving, self-sacrificing man used his own – _dare I say stunning? -_ body to serve as a human shield for his 'new' father and eldest brother closest to the deadly scene.

"Why, thank you very much, Cass. Your kind words never cease to amaze me. But we true heroes have to often face the hard choices of saving lives, versus keeping up high hygienic standards to offend a lady's delicate feminine sensibilities. So, manly as I am, I won't be requiring a bath just because you say so. I've got more blueblood in me than you know, so _pardone_ if I don't automatically jump at your every beck and call, sister." Combatively insulted as he leans against a nearby plane tree at the edge of the Fuchsia Garden and crosses his defiant arms, Eugene acts all high and mighty while he takes another snarky swipe at this alleged handmaiden of Rapunzel's who had the bad habit of getting under his skin.

Perhaps that was because Flynn secretly considered this Cassandra, who waltzed into their happy lives one day when that annoying Captain Schmidt brought his bossy child in to serve as the Princess' new ladies maid, as a competitive equal in terms of cunning adaptation and biting wit.

It all came with the territory of a being the rough and tumble daughter of the chief guardsman/ world adventurer with a background in weaponry.

"I'm only a Lady by title, Fitzherbert. Just like you're still only a Prince by marriage certificate, no matter which side of the royal sheets I've heard you came about on." The clued-up young woman - who was much older than Rapunzel in the ways of the world - quirks a titillated brow at Eugene with the innuendo that goes right over the sweet Princess of Corona's brown head.

"You and I are cut out of the same sly and crafty broadcloth, Mister. So if I say you need a bath, believe me, you are going to get that bath, one way or another." Not pulling any punches with Flynn, nor any other male she has ever loosed the sharp end of her sword or audacious tongue upon, bossy Cassandra pokes a challenging finger directly into the frowning man's chest.

Her timing as impeccable as her ability with her double daggers, Cassandra takes a step back when she feels a shift in the wind. The charcoal bob headed huntress snaps her fingers in the air to Eugene and Rapunzel's bewilderment.

That is, until the reverberating sound of pounding horse hooves and a rumbling carriage cart across a gravelly drive interrupt the still morning silence from the north end of the sprawling Egeskov castle complex.

 _ **WHINNY! WHINNY!**_

"You're just in time, fellas. Some big baby doesn't want to take his bath before church." Cassandra cattily declares as, just over the snowgie–laden hillside scenery of breathtaking flower garden after hedgerow garden, an all-too-familiar group of Corona's best, fellow Prussian compatriots begin to unload from all sides of a borrowed farming delivery cart that had Maximus and Sitron hitched together as a super express team pulling a load of heavy dreamers up the Egeskov drive.

"Wh-Whoa-Whoa-Whoa, guys! I was just telling Cass that I've cased this castle and it has some lovely changing rooms with modern indoor plumbing, designed for privacy for its gallant heroes…" Seeing already what he was about to be put through, a wheedling Eugene gives a shot at trying to worm his way out of trouble as the Snuggly Duckling thugs move in towards him with threatening looks on their unbecoming mugs.

"Really, _Your Highness_ ~? We'll have to check that out. Later." A churlish smirk crawls around the woman's skeptical face at this rogue turned selfless hero trying to squirm out of her grasp.

 _ **CLICK**_!

With another more sadistic click of her fingers over her shoulder, Cassandra unleashes the gang of Snuggly Duckling boys to come bounding around the corner. Axes, swords and fists were swinging and ready for a fight with Rügen and his men since Job had gone to town to relay to them.

The Caribbean man had been hanging in the shadows of the Ladegården, nursing Sitron as he quietly observed the trial inside the courtroom was about to be interloped by tens of evil black cloaked henchmen. So, Job purloined a cart from the stables and hitched Sitron, who was more than willing to go the extra mile for his boy Hans. Soon bloodhound Maximus was teamed up to go find the help that Wind Whisperer Kristoff had psychically expressed the directional vicinity of the Corona guards and Snuggly Duckling thugs thereof.

The decisive Snow Prince in his masterful mind meanderings had found a confluent compatriot in Job once he spotted the dark ex-pirate peering into the throne room unobserved by all others.

The alert Islander had picked up enough of the way the trial was going to share a nod with Kristoff in his call for backup. Immediately Job had the eager pair of recovering steeds, Maximus and Sitron, hitched up to a large wagon from the Lådegarden to fetch the gang from the tavern in Kvaerndrup.

So, here the boys were. A little late for the action, but from the looks on their motley faces, there would never be a dull moment with this lively crew.

"The big baby doesn't want to get his tender widdle bum wet? Oh, what a shame."

Eugene frowns when he hears the purposely punctuated, too familiar voice of a _dear friend_ raucously enter the messy scene. He doesn't even have to look up to see the occupants of the overloaded wagon rolling in upon Egeskov's colored gravel drive towards him to know they spelled trouble for him.

"Well, we might have a thing or two to say about that, _your serene Highness_!" Vladimir's deep baritone sarcastically announces the Snuggly Duckling thugs' arrival as he makes a thunderous leap from the horse-drawn carriage.

"Yeah! PU! What a _serene_ Stinker!" As old man Shorty passes out in Bruiser's arms, Attila stomps up to Eugene, glad he had his helmet on for the stench.

"Now who's the one who reminds us cultured gentlemen of the color brown, dear fellows?" Gunther turns up his artistic nose at the sulfuric gunpowder plus fresh blood and bowel splattered back of Flynn Rider.

"Yeah! Let's get'im cleaned up, real proper-like so he'll be at least decent to hob-knob with his new _ritzy_ brothers!" Leader Hookhand's gold tooth gleams maliciously down at Eugene as he shakes his shiny hook sadistically at the man from atop the Maximus and Sitron paired wagon cart.

Dismounting from the cart of over-stuffed Corona soldiers and criminals alike, all who had been rushing to this foreign castle for a convivial rescue of their begrudged Prince and unlikely friends on trial, along with his new little brother and Big Nose's erstwhile daddy. Hookhand bangs his peg-leg down to the gravelly path of this castle's ground as he trudges towards Flynn with a smug sneer on his face.

"Don't think there's enough suds in all of Denmark to make this filthy jerk's backside decent! Ha ha, har har!" Contradictory Fang chimes in, chortling alongside the rows of rats that had also hitched a ride here on his shoulders as Ulf pantomimes rubbing and scrubbing bubbles popping up in the air over Flynn's unappreciative head.

In consensus for the dirty task, Hook Hand, Vladimir, Killer, Gunther, Shorty, Fang, and Ulf join Bruiser and Killer already on the ground medically assisting a clucking Aged P. The old man had just ambled out of the throne room with Big Nose, Hilde, and his daughters as a free man, thanks in large part to Prince Hans.

"Heave ho! Heave ho! Get ready to hold your breath, Rider!" And when the 'friendly' group, en masse, converge upon the shocked and appalled Flynn Rider to callously pick up his wriggling form by all four stretched out limbs and unceremoniously dump him into the nearby stream.

Cassandra holds his loving wife back as a few of the shocked princesses straggling behind laugh under their hands at the violent spectacle. Rapunzel can do nothing more than giggle and waggle her fingers at the absurd raucous scene.

"Don't worry Raps. He's in no condition to represent our kingdom attending any birthday party with those fancy folks looking and smelling like that. He'll thank us later, believe me." Cassandra earned her keep as Rapunzel's confidante in the other meaning of the word as well. The strong-minded woman often had to fill in a healthy amount of the gap with the hesitant Prussian Princess's unsure dealings and her manipulative thief of a husband, who imagined he could swagger and talk into getting away with murder with his naive little lady.

That's where her friend Cassandra often stepped her shapely ankle into the relationship of her believed gullible friend.

Tall Ulf and short Shorty lopsidedly hold up a blanket to shield the screaming away ladies' surprisingly not-so-horrified sensibilities.

"My poor Eugene." With Pascal shrugging on her shoulder, compassionate Rapunzel still could sympathize with her love as she watches Eugene be savagely stripped and dunked and scrubbed from splitting head to boot while the rest of the Snuggly Duckling gang give him an unwanted bath.

A chortling Maximus uncontrollably cackles in sadistic glee while Captain Schmidt and several of the Corona guard join in the rubbernecking merriment beside a crossed arm and smirking, merciless Lady Cassandra with the glimmering, bewitching eyes.

* * *

Hans Westergaard blindly follows the Arendelle Royal family's lead beside his father King Herbert across the drawbridge towards Egeskov Chapel, where the ruler of this land felt drawn to give thanks to the Ruler of all.

Not very sure of anything anymore now that Elsa had thrown his senses for a wild loop, Hans felt a bit more like a little lost puppy in the long shadow of either his father, the powerful King of Denmark, or King Agdar, the Sovereign Admiral of Norway's prestigious Navy.

Nor did the reclaimed and reinstated Prince feel entirely worthy of all that had suddenly been handed to him on a silvery ice platter already on this morning full of surprises as he heads to the Chapel for morning services behind the stolen looks of his batting eyes Ice Queen.

No, Prince Hans felt quite humbled by these past few minutes full of warm praises, accolades and attentions from his father and even his brothers, as well as many visitors who had taken in some of the dramatic courtroom battle in which he had played such an important, vital role.

All the warm, heartfelt solicitudes of which the heretofore eager-to-please, ignored outcast young man's lonely heart was wholly unaccustomed to.

And Elsa's breathtaking kisses were the warmest of them all. With the taste of his Snowflake's luscious moisture still lingering on his lips, Hans cannot dismiss the unwavering red blush that seemed perpetually etched all over his features, seen and unseen.

"Are you well, Prince Hans?" Queen Idun's slows her pace with a demure Elsa on her arm to direct the motherly query to the flabbergasted redheaded who had gone a deathly shade of crimson in shame the closer Elsa of Arendelle was in proximity.

"Oh… Yes… That is… I believe…I am quite well… Thank you…Your Majesty." An emotionally overwhelmed Hans uncharacteristically stumbles at Elsa's mother's quiet attention, blushing even further as he stumbles over his words under the inquisitive Idun's kind indigo gaze over her shoulder back at him.

"So…this is Elsa's young man." Eyeing a head down, serious countenance Prince Hans appreciatively, Queen Arianna of Corona picks up her pace on her husband, King Friedrich of Prussia's arm to rejoin her sister and niece after the couple had left their own daughter with those questionable pub friends of hers by the stream.

Slightly snobbish Arianna would rather hobnob with the upper crust envoys and ambassadors who were all beginning to join King Herbert's outdoor promenade with his sons through Egeskov's ample resplendent gardens and renowned mazes as the group moves forward to the Triangular East Garden on the banks of the river Odense that led to Egeskov Chapel.

"With a Scottish mane of tempting titian hair to boot… My my, Idun. A union with the Danish Royal house is in order, at last." In a whisper for her ears only, Arianna laces a loving arm around her beloved little sister as she prompts her Friedrich to catch up with Herbert and his entourage of sons while they make their way across the long drawbridge above the moat.

With a raised brow, Queen Arianna's Swedish-Danish matchmaking efforts that feisty Princess Idun of Drottningholm had shunned in her youth all those years ago, is now taken up again for another try with Prince Anders' comely youngest brother and Idun's daughter this time.

"Ahem… Please excuse me, your Majesties." Beyond embarrassed and unable to quite deal with his chaotic emotions as his keen ears burn with every word he was not supposed to hear, Hans does the chivalrous thing and decides to flee.

Pausing in his tracks, Hans gives Elsa a deep gentlemanly bow before he backs off to fade into the growing swarm of visitors and princes and princesses.

"Skittish, isn't he, Elsa? And I thought the maiden was the one supposed to play hard to get." A smiling Queen Arianna honestly speaks her mind, Idun praying that her otherwise engaged Agdar, several paces ahead, did not overhear.

"Though he does show an exquisite choice in fine jewelry." Elsa's pale skin flushes into a deep rosy shade as her opinionated Aunt now pivots to admire her blonde niece's engagement ring with a discerning eye.

"Why don't you go collect your sister, min flicka (my little girl)? You know how she wanders. We don't want our Anna getting lost in the crowd." Before turning her reproving attention back to her own embarrassing sibling, Idun hastily requests Elsa to fetch her little sister who had dashed off earlier to go help responsible Kristoff park and feed and water the hard-working, thankless heroes Nysnaer, Snaedis, Flurru, as well as Sven and Svala in the stables.

"Primmy, this is serious. Please don't tease them." A biting her lower lip Idun chides her elder sister with a slight smack to a chided Arianna's arm when she sees Hans purposely move to the other side of the bridge to avoid Elsa.

"Oh, Idun, how I've missed you! I'm so beyond thrilled to have you back, that I won't even scold you for using that ridiculous nickname for me in public." Prim and proper Arianna soon warmly wraps he arm's orchid way around her baby sister. Arm in arm, both view Elsa stealthily making her way through the crowd towards her own cherished sibling, just rejoining the leisurely stroll.

Although, Elsa's eyes were still on the prize of a certain redheaded young man who had been waylaid by Princess Eugenia's gloating several paces to the right when she and her newly realigned intended rejoin the group, proudly showing off her specially crafted golden ring.

"Hi, Elsa! So many people just showed up out of nowhere! This place is a madhouse, with mazes and confusing gardens everywhere!" Princess Anna of Arendelle had been acrobatically climbing on the drawbridge pilings to get her bearings to find her parents and big sister who had already moved on ahead without her when she had gone with Kristoff to attend to the exhausted horses and reindeers in the stables. Not to mention then Marshmallow, Olaf and the children having snowgie snowball fights in the beech maze distracted the playful girl on the way back.

From the drawbridge 'tightrope' she had been childishly showing off her shaky skills to 'tight rope' walk in her pent-up exhilaration, Princess Anna brazenly leaps down, right into her always-ready Kristoff's big, strong, expectant arms.

"Your Majesty."

One by one, under their wide, entertained eyes, Hans' royal brothers make it a point to pass by the brassy ginger gal and this most baffling Queen who had just recently posed as their maid.

To Anna's jaw-dropped shock, each man gives Elsa his most deferential bow and awestruck felicitations, save for the twins who were conversing with the obese Russian Czar who had just appeared in the east end of the castle grounds to be confronted by his fickle daughters and their re-affianced Danish beaus.

"Anna. Pinch me." With a forced smile on her lovely features that nod back with a curtsey to each man civilly, Elsa uncharacteristically mumbles to her little sister under her breath when the ginger girl trots out like a moth to a flame to her Ice Queen big sister.

"Okay." Literal Anna impetuously acquiesces with her big sister's proposition. She pinches Elsa's fleshy upper arm, followed by a mischievous smile. "What did I do that for?" The innocent Norske girl whispers up to her tall and elegant sibling's ear.

"Did you ever think that we would be here?" Elsa murmurs with a nervous pasted smile to each bowing handsome Prince Royal and visiting European envoy who passes by her down on the drawbridge.

"No." Anna answers sourly, scrunching up her nose at the thought of paying a call to _the Danes_ that Papa always disliked. Plus, Hans made the Southern Isles not exactly the first place she wished to visit after all that happened.

"And I never thought that **this** would be here either, Elsa." Changing the subject to one more pressing on her rattled mind, Anna lifts Elsa's left hand finger and wiggles the platinum silver diamond, blue topaz and sapphire studded ring.

Both young women stare down at the bejeweled ring sparkling in the sunlight back at them markedly.

"Did you believe this was even possible…for me, Anna? I feel like I'm soaring through the clouds, but with no net." A timid Elsa whispers in an almost awestruck wonder that was half in irresolute fear, half in trembling exhilaration at the thought of her being engaged to anyone.

Never mind handsome and dashing Prince Hans Westergaard who had been so controversial and so instrumental in these sisters' romantic lives.

"Is it too… much…for you to bear, Anna? You are the most cherished person in the world to me. If you believe this is so dreadfully wrong… I won't continue…Though…I know my heart will be forever broken..." That last little part of the sentence, barely spoken aloud, and in the smallest tiny choking whisper admitted hesitant Elsa's timorous secret desire to live such a life.

And not just because she was Queen. Elsa wished to have the same joys and pleasures of an ordinary woman that her vast magical abilities with the ice made her previously believe was never possible for her.

In silent reflection of each of their souls, Anna and Elsa share a trembling-eyed forever-sisters moment.

Elsa, just at the cusp of fully opening her heart to the mystery of love, could not – would not – take the next step if her loving little sister/dearest best friend did not want her to. Elsa would try her best to never dare to dream this new astonishing dream anymore, never think of handsome Prince Hans ever again beyond the recesses of her lost dreams, if her Anna was yet convinced he was still the wrong man for her.

But the true heart, unclouded by resentment or jealousy or antipathy on this bright sunny morn, allowed Anna to clearly see that hope never before glimpsed in Elsa's eyes. Her big sister was once terrified to be close to someone and now she was terrified to be torn away from him. But Elsa would give up her new dream if Anna just said the word. The second princess of Arendelle read that all in a second spent in her Elsa's glimmering eyes, with everything riding on little Anna's decision, for once...

"Elsa…?" Anna's blue-green eyes shiver up at her sister, her dearest friend, her hero. And gazing clearly into her Elsa's tremulous, yet indomitable optimistic eyes, the loving soul in Princess Anna, linked with Kristoff's calm and steady one, realized that this may be the most important moment in the lives of both of these cherished sisters.

For Elsa's future happiness – as brittle and as fragile thin as first frost's verglas on the windowpanes – hung now upon this sprightly young girl's clumsy, yet well-meaning hands.

Hands that were grateful when a big strong one suddenly encircles over her shaking clenched fist, as Kristoff arrives with a strange parcel tucked awkwardly under his muscled arm. Apart from her own uncertainties, mixed with a fair share of jealousy, anger, and utmost love concerning her darling sister and _that_ Hans, she had witnessed this forbidden love affair develop into a high pitch relationship.

Sensing her Kristoff's big heart linked with hers for encouragement, Anna closes her burning eyes with a quick prayer for right judgment and the strength to do it.

Just as if on cue, a church organist begins to play the plaintive strains of the stirring hymn 'Sun of My Soul'. The choir's moving words set to music leave its poignant impact on Anna's spicy mind, heart and troubled soul to truly find it in her good girl heart to forgive her worst enemy enough to share with him her most precious treasure of all.

 ** _'_** _Sun of my soul, Thou Savior dear,  
It is not night if Thou be near;  
Oh, may no earthborn cloud arise  
To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes. _

_If some poor wand'ring child of Thine  
Has spurned today the voice divine,  
Now, Lord, the gracious work begin;  
Let him no more lie down in sin. _

_Watch by the sick, enrich the poor  
With blessings from Thy boundless store;  
Be every mourner's sleep tonight,  
Like infants' slumbers, pure and right. _

_Come near and bless us when we wake,  
'Ere through the world our way we take,  
Till in the ocean of Thy love  
We lose ourselves in Heav'n above.'_

After a profound sigh, Anna removes her diminutive hands from under Kristoff's silent sturdy warmth to lace tightly around Elsa's quavering fingers, including that left one with Hans' promise ring upon it. Then the ginger princess opens the sea of her aquamarine eyes to look up into Elsa's stunning blue orbs earnestly.

"Elsa. Nothing is wrong with love, and _everything_ is possible with love. Didn't we discover that together? It even looks like love can thaw frozen hearts of boys who were jerks, until they become our new heroes." With a sage wisdom that went far behind her twenty-one years of life, the radiant hearted princess, glowing in the fresh sunlight, decisively responds to her trembling sibling with bolstering warmth of her own expressed in a sweet kiss to Elsa's pale cheek.

"I trust you to embrace the sunshine of your heart, Elsa. I love you no matter what, even if it gives me sunburn, to let Hans Westergaard move in with us back home." Anna looks straight into an indebted Elsa's by now tearful eyes.

"Besides, if we just left him here I think I would miss having _that_ Hans to kick around every now and then, to knock some sense into his blockhead." Still playfully living up to her saucy running repartee with her favorite sparring partner, even in his absence, Anna gives Elsa a quirky smile.

Overcome, Elsa hugs her dearest friend gratefully, with tears of gratitude dancing in her cerulean azure eyes.

"Thank you, Anna. Bless your pure heart." With several cool yet warm sweet kisses to Anna's reddening cheeks, Elsa hugs her little sister close, a tremendous weight lifted off her thin icy shoulders.

"I love you." Elsa openly admits, never before feeling so free to chase the sky, with plucky Anna's endless belief in her sister to hold her heart up high in it.

"And I love you, too." Anna responds, smiling broadly in sing-songy manner. "That Hans had just better appreciate how lucky a 'devil boy' he is." Anna hurls one final verbal volley at her sworn enemy, borrowing an epitaph for him. That causes Elsa to smile again at the funny way her baby sister could always make her laugh and bring warm sunshine to her cold world, too.

* * *

"There you are, Anna. I wish to go and take Elsa to freshen up a little. But I dare not leave your father alone unattended. You stay with Papa, my little girl, while your aunt and I go in to get Elsa changed into something more… _suitable_ … for church." Idun finally ceded to her stuffy elder sister's fashion advice as Queen Arianna had surveyed Elsa moving like a sleek panther across the churchyard in her eye-catching outfit.

According to her stuffy Aunt, through the electrified crowd of men, Elsa was like ' _catnip'_ , as her slender gait caused them, young and old alike, to nearly trip over each other at the sight of her rather risqué ice clothing versus their Victorian sensibilities.

"You bet, Mama! Kristoff and I got this covered." Anna yanks a secure arm around her husband's neck, pulling the big brawny bare-chested blond in. Kristoff felt quite out of place in the well-dressed crowd of royals and diplomats, but he would always stand by her side.

"And Kitten, be sure to keep your Papa warm and friendly – most of all – with one of our dear hymns if he gets too uptight while I am away. You do that for me, _min spadbarns_ (my baby)?" With a motherly whisper and a glance over Anna's head to her at-all-times-needing-warm-security King, Queen Idun gives her ginger girl's braids a straightening tug accompanied by a warm smile that extends up to her tall blond mountain man.

"Don't worry! Papa's a great big warm softy." With a dismissive chuckling wave of her hand, Anna recalled her wonderful parent for playing dollies with her, reading tall tales to her, burping along when she was gassy, and lifting her to reach high trees when the love spoiled little girl was growing up. It was hard for the imaginative child to ever associate her warm-hearted Papa with a threatening or hostile cold attitude.

As for realistic Kristoff, he didn't need to use his intuitive Wind Whisperer skills to realize how unreceptive the Ice King could be with just one cool, standoffish stare.

"Anna! Kristoff! There you are, my boy! King Herbert. Are you aware that this extraordinary young man of our Anna's is the actual Snow Queen's own son?" King Friedrich, feeling quite amicable in this fine weather at being reacquainted with some of his diplomatic friends he had not seen in years, motions for an embarrassed arm-scratching-the-back-of his-head modest Kristoff and brilliantly smiling Anna to join his walk beside the Danish King.

"He has magical abilities to contact ordinary people with just the power of his great mind." Impressed King Friedrich pats Kristoff on the back hard, conveying his own wonderment of this strapping Norwegian's singular ability to mentally contact with a dull human being like himself.

 _Ha! It was almost like some otherworldly dreamlike force entering my mind like a nymph from some Shakespearean play._

"The Snow Queen? She is a real…woman? I was not aware the Snow Queen was more than an ephemeral legend." King Herbert asks these two neighboring Kings with a congenial amiability that thoroughly lacked the disdainful haughty aggression and competitiveness with which he had formerly addressed other monarchs in the past.

 _The past is in the past, Herbert._ The once again in control of his own senses King lets go of all his regrets, determined to face the future alongside his children just enjoying God's gifts granted to his repentant, pitiful soul.

"But I suppose there are numerous facts I was unaware of until this blessed day." He murmurs, scanning over the crowd dotted with his offspring, and Egeskov's fields full of their offspring enjoying the glorious sun-drenched day, with a pride he never envisioned before.

"Certainly she is! I've flown on her mystic horses myself through the skies to here! Tell him, Agdar! You've had your share of run-ins with the Majestic Mistress of the North yourself with your ice powers. I hear you owe your skills of the cold to her. And Elsa in turn inherited that magic from you. ' _T'is true: there's magic in the web of it...'_ " (Othello Act III, Scene IV) Interested in little Anna's tales that the sweet chatterbox had conveyed over their skybound journey, King Friedrich then applies a quote from his favorite Bard. The pleasant King of Corona tries to lighten his younger brother-in-law's chilly atmosphere with literary levity on this transfigured Danish sovereign's special occasion.

"The Snow Queen is a very special being who holds her quiet pristine court over all of our lands for several months of every year. Her presence is a reminder to each of us about how a tender, soft and delicate snowflake can become one of the strongest forces if the focused wind is at her back…" Associating the profound vigors of an icy blizzard with his proven quite capable daughter, as now self-possessed Ice Queen, Agdar, though calmly maintaining his composure to converse with the two older Kings on an even level subject, still cannot keep his troubled mind from giving a smile to his own sparkling yet delicate snowflake of a child who was calmly departing towards the castle on her Mama's lovely arm.

 _Oh, my Elsa… You have matured so much in stability of your powers and assurance of your heart since we departed your life and Anna's… Enough to take on intimidating conqueror King Herbert, and be the one to conquer his cold heart. I am impressed at how you so affected this harsh kingdom._

"Friedrich already introduced me to your little gingersnap Princess Anna, King Agdar. Quite a quick footed and sturdy child for one so slight of stature. With a very warm hug." King Herbert recalled how Elsie's sassy younger sister dared to grab a King to not let him fall. "Both of your beautiful girls have emblazoned a lasting impression of my heart that now beats with genuine warmth and no longer cool indifference." King Herbert's eyes, watching Elsa enter his castle, meet Anna's, then carry over the dank moat to scan the growing crowd around the resting garden beside Egeskov Chapel in the sunlight.

In this short time, the visiting dignitaries, ambassadors and gentry had either heard word of the early morning drama from a Princess or servant or her ladies' maid. Or they had simply been awakened by the loudly ringing church bells that the King had signaled Lars and his wife Isabelle to implement early on this joyous day.

"Father? Should I not order a carriage for you and your important Royal visitors across the drawbridge for the remainder of the distance? I really think that after this morning's ordeal that you should rest before venturing–" Forty-eight-year-old worrywart Prince Kaleb had a hard time catching up to his seventy-year-old parent's brisk gait towards the open doors of Egeskov Chapel across the waters of the moat.

"No, you should not, Kaleb. I am at my rest heading towards the church. I cannot speak for King Friedrich, nor King Agdar, but I am rather invigorated by this fine morning to walk my dilapidated ancient bones across the grounds with my sons and their kin. All of my sons." King Herbert gives mention to glance back to where his reinstated son Hans was lagging behind.

The King alters his forbidding frown down at his eldest son's concern for him into an amused smile when he meets Agdar and Friedrich"s raised brows. "Thank you for your concern, my boy. But in fact I feel as light as a feather, on this bright sunlit morn to lead the congregation in the Lord's worship that I have been sorely remiss in serving these past twenty odd years." As he approaches Egeskov Chapel, the dark swirling moat traversed, King Herbert not only apologizes to Kaleb for his curtness, but the King silently begs pardon to God for his spiteful recourse at the time of his wife's death in forbidding the bells to be rung in Egeskov's church Chapel ever again, while only dust was permitted to play upon its pipe organ since.

"No longer. And our children will stand before His altar beside me, Louise, starting today." Humbly Herbert whispers, his face awash in the sunlight smiling upward to Heaven.

His sons and the diplomats and visitors curiously watch as they follow his Royal Promenade towards Egeskov Chapel's finally opened doors, where King Herbert would personally be expected to meet and greet guests with a tentative smile on his still handsome face.

Listening to the holy music streaming down from the choir apse, Herbert felt inside as giddy as a schoolboy, though a physical stumble causes many of royal spectators to gasp.

 _{"Kristly!"}_ Princess Anna, faithfully supporting at her own father's side, mentally directs her Snow Prince Kristoff to reach out to steady the wobbly older man.

"Such a fine strapping fellow, you have here little Princess Anna, this child of the Snow Queen. Your father must be relieved to have such fine Royal lineage interwoven in his family now to take care of his little girl." King Herbert comments as he uncharacteristically gives credence to someone other than his own clan.

"It has been a long time since I have been sociable. Please, gentleman. Come and help me greet this multitude of guests attending my birthday celebration. Friedrich, before church services begin, I mean to invite them all to the awards ceremony to be held later this night, after the birthday celebration, for this morning's selfless heroics of your noble son-in-law, Prince Eugene. I wonder where the boy has gotten off to…" Giving King Friedrich a nod, Herbert glances around for that dark skinned young man who risked it all to save not only his life so selflessly, but that of his son and heir, Prince Kaleb, as well.

"Selfless? Noble? Eugene Fitzherbert? Are we speaking of the same man?" Friedrich lets out a little chortle at the very idea of Rapunzel's sardonic, lazy and somewhat lethargically recalcitrant mate proving himself to be an esteemed, gallant hero in this kingdom.

"Oh, don't worry, Herbert. That lad never can keep himself out of trouble for long, but I expect he'll turn up when the time comes to receive recognition, I'm sure." King Friedrich did not always have the best relationship with the cocky thief who showed up on his Castle doorstep with his little girl Rapunzel, whether the Corona Palace guards approved of Flynn Rider sticking around, or not.

But over the years, Eugene Fitzherbert had proven to make his precious child keep that happy light in her eyes, and had grown on Arianna and himself for his wit and humor. Friedrich never really considered Eugene that much of brave knight in shining armor, but when it came down to it, he wasn't that bad a fellow, all in all.

"May I say, I am a bit rusty in the sociable pleasantries, as you well may see, Gentlemen. So, I am grateful to have you and your good family here as my Guests of Honor to assist me in remembering how to be a proper host." With an uncomfortable Kristoff's stabilizing arm around his shoulder, self-effacing Herbert's rough voice softens particularly at Anna's buoyant smirk up at him. She keeps a dogged hold of her about-to-rudely-leave Papa Agdar who was unable to detach his disinterested self from his girl's sticky, skinny appendages.

Warm King Friedrich helps out by draping his own large arms over the recuperating from the cold pair of monarchs with a hearty laugh to engender friendly ties between the once chilly foreign relation partners.

 _"'Words are easy, like the wind; but faithful friends are hard to find._ ' Eh, Agdar?" With an elbow in the fit and trim youngest monarch's tight gut, which causes the ice blue eyed, pale ginger man to purse his lips beneath his dapper mustache, Friedrich adds a bit of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets to Sundry Notes' to their _affable_ little group.

So at the Egeskov Chapel door, as the lofty fellowship hymn of ' _Blest Be the Tie that Binds'_ plays, the three Kings of Denmark, Prussia and Norway, stand at the Chapel front steps to greet each arriving diplomat, envoy, ambassador and servants alike with the trio of their royal fatherly smiles.

' _Blest Be the Tie that Binds, our hearts in Christian love.  
The fellowship of kindred minds, likened to that Above.'_

* * *

 ** _Now as for the Motherly angle…_**

A quick stop by Marshmallow, who had been codified by children, Olaf, and snowgies bombarding him to _play nice_ , saw Queen Idun skillfully cajoling the perturbed ice monster as she raided the storage compartments in the ' _Snow Beast'_ her husband had icily installed for Elsa's traveling supplies and change of wardrobe.

Her older sister Arianna was rather petrified to approach the humongous snow creature, even moreso when Marshmallow offered her a toothy grin of friendly greeting, resulting in prim Queen Arianna letting out a scream and indecorously high-tailing it into Egeskov Castle's rear door.

"Come and rest and feel free to change your clothes up here in my private boudoir, ladies. It's the most replete changing room in the house, for all my primping. After all, I was said to be the most stylish woman in all of Europe, in my hey-day as a girl. Anything you see you fancy, just feel free to try it on." Smiling from her practiced politician's wife ear to ear, Princess Frederika of Radziwell had made it a point to be the one to escort Queen Idun and her daughter Elsa into the house. Her curious eyes all the while were upon the petite mother even more than the intriguing daughter, for reasons all her own.

"Why thank you, Frederika. It is very kind of you to offer your own large suite with such a fine vanity and your own clothing to strangers." Seeing the offer only as Christian charity, forgetting these women's communal background story in her old age, Sister Clarice Angelika had come back in from town for the King's birthday, in hopes to share a little prayer with him at least. The Mother Superior of Odense who had tried to do God's work on this cold fish, who dear Louise adored, over the years to no avail never knew such a soulful change would've occurred to the King by way of a lovely little maid who would be a queen.

"It's the least I can do to send our travelers on their way as soon as possible." Princess Frederika answers, all smiles, though if you looked deeper there was definitely some motive behind those forced grins. But Sister Angelika was too intrigued by Elsa to notice. Although Idun acutely sensed something amiss towards herself particularly, she offered a nervous smile to the flower and ribbon adorned, bright-eyed Polish royal.

"How that boy captured your eyes so well, my dear, I will never know… Through those portraits, I feel I have known you all my life, Princess Elsa… pardon me – _Queen_ Elsa." Sister Angelika gazes curiously at the pale blonde young lady she had seen in so many drawings and charcoals done by her favorite young charge that was the very likeness of the crystal clear eyed beauty standing before her now.

Brushing back her askew hair, Elsa blushes with proud memory of the gallery of portraits in his attic devoted to her, all by Hans Westergaard's artistic hand.

"Yes, after that awful incident this morning, let me say how I admire how very brave you were to have the courage to go before the court to face down that evil Count - _whom I never liked, mind you. But did anyone listen_? And stand by your betrothed, the man you love. It was very romantic." Peppy even early in the morning, Princess Elisabeth of Flanders had also shown Queen Idun and a breathless Elsa into the Egeskov Castle's back entrance at attentive Princess Frederika's beckon.

"Yes, we princesses of Egeskov were all impressed with your daughter for her self-sacrifice, Queen Idun. You would scarcely believe it, but the dear girl arrived to us posing as a maid! And she was extremely efficient at the job, too. What a remarkable young woman to come all this distance to go through all that trouble, for a boy." While fluffing her blonde ringlets of perfectly coiffed hair in the mirror over Elsa's shoulder, Princess Isabelle of Sicily marvels at the Norwegian Queen's competent infiltration of this castle that the Italian older woman didn't believe herself capable of accomplishing.

"And also your daughter, Queen Arianna! Princess Rapunzel has become a dear friend to myself and each of my sisters-in-law with her gentle compassion and caring heart for her cousin and friend." Princess Adelaide emerges from her own cool demeanor that Rapunzel had coaxed her out of to offer a friendly smile to her new friend's queenly mother.

"I thank you all for being her friends, my dears, in this difficult time for her. My sweet Rapunzel values family and friendship more than anything after her long lonely years of stolen captivity." As she walked to the stairwell, for once feeling at ease with royalty similar to her age, Queen Arianna opens up about her one and only child's stolen youth away from her true family and any outside influence beyond that witch Gothel in that hidden tower.

"Yes, yes, Elisabeth, Isabelle, Adelaide. Look at the time! Let us leave these ladies to change their attire while we ready for church and then the birthday celebration. If you need anything, do inform my ladies' maid, just in the other room of our suite, dearests. You are our guests here in Egeskov, and I do look forward to speaking to you more in depth later at the party, with my husband, whom I sure will be _thrilled_ to see you." Charming Polish Princess Frederika enigmatically says to Idun as she sits the stunned young Royal Norwegian Queen down in front of the small mirrored vanity seat as she steers the delegation of clucking princesses out her bedroom door.

Charismatic Frederika smiles coyly as she watches the pair of women about her age fuss over a dreamy young Elsa's mussed hair and dress as she pauses to purposely adjust a framed painting of her own family hanging on the wall, giving Idun a pointed possessive look before she leaves.

Too busy right at the moment to consider the reasons for this Princess' marked secretiveness, Idun shrugs and returns to the task of restyling Elsa's hair with a soothing song.

 _"Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee…"_

After a few quiet moments of Elsa uncommonly humming along, Idun adjusts her eyes to look into Elsa's face, softly humming the tune she always sung to her high-strung child when she brushed her platinum tresses growing up.

"Elsa? Are you content?" Idun asks her quiet daughter in low tones, as the petite older Queen of Norway skillfully untwists Elsa's messy braid. The caring mother brushes it out to restyle into a prim up-do chignon bun that she had become quite adept at between herself and two daughters with long hair and only one ladies' maid between them in Arendelle castle for years.

"Yes, Mama." Elsa responds distractedly, her bedazzled eyes and delicate digits playing with the diamond snowflake adorning her left-hand ring finger, as her Aunt Arianna smoothes out the wrinkles in her niece's velveteen royal purple long skirt.

"Are you rested enough to attend church with us _, min_ _kära_ (my dear)?" Idun gently brushes Elsa's long disheveled wavy locks, aware more of what had gone on in that courtroom through Kristoff's mind meld contact with her earlier than she let on to Elsa's jealous Papa.

Queen Idun eyes Elsa's radiant, pleased expression upon the significant piece of jewelry placed upon her slender finger.

"Yes, Mama." Elsa repeats, as if the diamonds, blue topaz and sapphires glimmering in the window's sunlight held some mysterious entrancement over the young woman who never dared believe herself 'normal' enough to have such a feminine luxury ever reside there.

Now that the danger had passed and the excitement of the moment was over, the enormity of the situation was starting to sink into Elsa's mind, quite dazing her.

"Are you in love with Prince Hans?" While keeping her tender brushstrokes as steady as her lullaby melodic voice, wily Mama Queen Idun slips in the question that startled the ear of her older sister, but Elsa was too engrossed in her own thoughts to be on her guard.

"Yes, Mama." Elsa, in a dreamy fantasy calmly, truthfully admits as she displays her elegant hand with an equally resplendent ring. Its innumerable precious stones and jewels shine and glimmer in the sunlight streaming through the small circular window.

"And you do wish to be his wife?" Queen Idun finishes her hairstyling and begins the pet her girl's silky blonde locks to gaze directly into her gleaming eyes full of evident affection as Elsa was humming her own harmonic melody of love now, barely registering her mother's soft inquisitive words.

"Oh, yes… His wife?!" A guilty shamefaced Elsa abruptly awakens from her euphoric warm dreamworld in the sunlit jewelry reflected prismatic mirror to meet her mother's sparkling laughing eyes back at her in it.

Elsa blushes desperately to a deep shade of pink, the lovely girl's usually pale face coloring deeply as her hands fly up to cover both of her hot cheeks at the sudden flustered heat the Ice Queen rarely emitted.

"Oh, my Elsa." Idun gathers her daughter's hands from her cheeks to glimpse that warmth and the beautiful engagement ring on Elsa's delicate finger, remembering how she felt when Agdar had first had bestowed hers upon her special finger, nearly twenty-five years ago.

"That's my big girl! You found the very boy I had secretly pegged for you to fall in love with, all on your own, without your Mama! I'm so proud of you!" A giggling Idun coos in pure delight of the happy ending of matrimony for her shy, reserved child.

"Now all you have to do is tell your handsome Prince Hans that you have accepted his proposal properly. Aside from the fact that you are a queen and need to ask him rather than the other way around as it is for most women, **all** men need more assurance than we in these matters. Your sweet father had asked for my hand several ways in his over-practiced, long-winded speech to my face before the pigheaded man dared to close his mouth and open his ears long enough to accept my resounding ' _yes'_." Idun proudly lifts Elsa's clenched fists and squeezes them, holding that precious ring finger up to her proud motherly lips was a blessing kiss upon it.

"You must cherish this first symbol of his love forever." Whispering directly in Elsa's blushing ear, Idun, who used to run wild and barefoot picking flowers through the fields of Drottningholm as a young girl, had never changed her romantic nature, despite the years that had tried to wear her down. Her great love for her man was still just as strong – perhaps stronger now – that they struggled together in good times and bad. Agdar and Idun had their girls to share their love with no matter what the difficulties life threw at the close knit family, now that the Lord had reunited them together.

"The symbol of his love…" Elsa mumbles to herself in a dreamy dazed manner, her dainty feet taking her to the window, eyes tracing her handsome Prince's lean, dashing form in the distance where his vibrant mahogany red hair ablaze in the rising sun stood out, as a smitten Elsa falls to lean against the window longingly.

('Elsa's in love.') Queen Arianna mouths to her younger sister as the pair of older ladies share a warm hug at the lovely sight.

Elsa's entranced eyes were gazing out the glass window directed down to the scene below to where her wide-eyed and shocked Prince Hans was being addressed in brotherly tones by many of his twelve siblings. The brothers' apologies for a lifetime of cruelty and cold distancing from this isolated last child of their father came in varying degrees of genuine to tepid. Hans' dozen siblings, at King Herbert's godly example, were finally willing to give the 'Squirrel' a second chance. After all – as Didrik so gallantly stated in the court – Hans was still their blood in the end.

And so being, could someday come home and be worthy of forgiveness.

 _That's what brothers do._

"Mama? Is it… really…all right?" For the first time actually envisioning herself walking down the aisle to the welcoming warm arms of her handsome Prince Hans Westergaard had changed Elsa's very solitary mindset about the binary subject of matrimony. Elsa timidly whispers in her mother's gleeful embrace as Idun pulls Elsa on her high heeled feet to hug her tight.

"Of course, Elsa. You have made your Mama so happy! And you did it all on your own, by God's grace." Idun coos with as much delight in her giggles as there were happy tears in her eyes to see her Elsa finally in love and ready to admit it. "This ring means you will belong to him, and he to you—for always. Is that what you truly wish, my darling?"

"'I will belong to him'…Oh, Mama! It's all I want!" Elsa throws herself at Idun, burying her blushing face into her mother's bosom. She was beyond pleased to have her mother's caring support, and her beloved Anna's as well, to be heartened to move forward in her relationship with Hans.

"Just promise me that no matter what anyone – your wonderful, pompous, stubborn Papa included – says to dissuade you, Elsa, you must follow your heart straight to your love." A mother who knew best, Idun starts to warn her once unsure, fragile daughter of the oncoming storm's opposition. Although she had a glorious feeling that because of this new warmth her oldest child now craved – for once in her entire fearful life - Elsa was more frightened of losing the man she loved than be terrified to hide from all the future full of uncertainties that surely would come with such a love.

"– And without fear, don't EVER let that first feeling of your love grow old, whatever the rest of the world may say. My darling, if you believe that nothing can separate you - not life or death, or even your Papa—" Idun chuckles sweetly at the thought of her blizzard force hubby.

"—Prince Hans will be **your** **only** for a lifetime. He will be your heart, and all you'll ever need. But you will have to be his tower of strength, his unwavering and loyal partner as well. Cherish his love, as he will yours. You hold his heart in your hands. Always remember that." The Queen was wise in the ways of love, for she was still madly in love with her man, and he with her, these twenty-five years later as Idun hugs her trembling girl fiercely to her chest.

"This is your chance for happiness, my darling Elsa. So grasp hold of it fiercely with both hands - and _all_ of your heart." In this long in coming mother-daughter heart-to-heart talk concerning the delicate subject of love that Idun never dared broach with Elsa for all her uncertain doubts before, the wisdom of a mother's love for her child finally shines through.

"And don't be shy to let Hans know it, He hasn't known much of love in his unwanted life, poor motherless boy, so you must convince him that he's your everything." Idun gives one final tidbit of advice, seeing in this young prince much of her own true love's gallant frailties in an amazing courage and clever intelligence that shielded an insecure heart.

 _You and he are so much alike, Hans… Perhaps that's why my Agdar fears you most of all to take his little girl away…And perhaps that's why she fell so madly in love with you who reached into her sheltered soul…_

"I don't know how it happened, but…Mama, Hans **is** my everything…" Elsa blushes all over as her entire body shivers in excitement at something other than the chilled cold ice that ran through her veins now. The beautiful young lady was trembling with the warm hopeful expectation of her own actual love affair.

Motherly Queen Idun wraps Agdar's grey Arendelle cloak, the one her husband had given his Queen for extra warmth on their ice sled journey here, around their daughter's trembling shoulders. Although, the intelligent older Queen of Norway understood that Elsa's tremble had nothing to do with the cold, but rather something so much more.

For once in her life, full of trials and tribulations she thought she could never overcome, Elsa Bernadotte felt like every other young Princess who had dreams of love for a handsome, dashing, courageous Prince to sweep her off her feet and give her longing heart that fairytale happy ending she never dreamed even possible.

 _'For the Lord God is my sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.'_ Psalm 84:11

Hearing the Bible verse echo in her mind, Elsa smiles gratefully for her Mama's encouraging love to show her the way. The Ice Queen lifts her face to bask in the sun above, feeling free at last to explore her heart and soul, ready to open up to her new love in all its radiant, sparkling light…

* * *

Long time no see, my Frozen friends! It's been a busy, exciting New Year, thus far!

This chapter was to be the big climax one, but it was getting so long that I decided to break it off here and get its romantically crucial conclusion up by Valentine's, as promised!

It's all been already written, way back at Christmastime, but only halfway typed! I hope this whets your appetite for the complete romance to come…

Whew! There were a lot of loose ends to tie up when you near the close of a sprawling tale such as this adventure in the Southern Isles! Loads of notes-to-self I've been collecting as addendum these past couple weeks all spinning around my nutsy head! 0

So, what did you think of my take on Cassandra? That's how I'd originally envisioned her since I first heard of Rapunzel's 'tough-as-nails' handmaiden. And she fit my mental picture exactly when her artwork and CM came out a month ago from the TV movie leading into the new show!

It seems she's a gutsy lady with a merciless streak when it comes to teasing Flynn Rider ('Suffice it to say: Nobody likes me!')

I've tweaked her chara a little bit, now that I've seen the TV show pilot last night. She's the tough _daughter_ of Captain of the Guard Schmidt! I knew they'd have some connection! And I threw in her owl (named un-romantically 'Owl') as her intro beacon.

I think I'm going to like having her around in my third act to Frozen Again, coming soon! I'm excited!

Did you like Anna and Elsa's 'Sisters forever' moment? Because of their great love for each other, Elsa was prepared to give all her dreams of Hans up if Anna was too distressed by it! And Anna loves her soooo much, she couldn't bear to see Elsa unhappy and lonely. So…Hans got the thumbs up for now, but he'd better watch out for feisty little sisters should he flub the ball! Anna will always have that rivalrous 'tude towards _that **Red**_ , it seems! Will make for some great future dialogue at the family dinner table in Arendelle!

As for overprotective Papa Agdar, Kristoff already got a taste of his cold shoulder today! And I pity poor Hans, under Ice King Agdar's Naval Admiral's command even more! Just wait until Papa finds out what you've done, Elsie!^^ Good thing for clever and sympathetic Mama Idun!

Please send me your reviews on all the events of this chapter leading up to a special moment in the next, possibly final installment of Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love' (Methinks there'll be an epilogue to tie into the third book, so don't cry yet ^-*)

God bless!

Get ready for some major Helsa romance breakthroughs in the next installment, on or before Valentine's Day!

HarukaKou

* * *

Plotz – Yiddish slang for burst of aggravation

Mekhaye, Kinder – 'Wonderful, children!' in Jewish German

Tatti - Daddy in Yiddish

старый отец – (pronounced 'staryy Otets') means old father in Russian

любовь всей моей жизни – pronounced 'lyubov' vsey moyey zhizni' - means 'The love of my life' in Russian

Дорогая - pronounced 'dorogaya' – is my darling' in Russian

Большой брат - pronounced 'Bol'shoy brat' means big brother in Russian

* * *

 _'Sun of my Soul_ ' hymn was written by John Keble  & Hursting in 1820

 _'Blest Be the Ties that Bind'_ hymn was written by John Fervant & Hans Någeli in 1832


	27. Chapter 27 -My Heart Til the End of Time

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 27**

 **"** **My Heart Until the End of Time"**

King Herbert had met and civilly conversed with far more royal visitors and diplomatic guests than the old curmudgeon had interacted with in almost three decades of distant coolness.

Many ambassadors and envoys and royal guests had only accepted Kaleb and Princess Emma's invitation begrudgingly on behalf of keeping peaceful relations between their countries. In making an effort to put on a diplomatic show of respect to this unfriendly, belligerent Danish monarch on his marked seventieth year, none expected his welcome to be so warm and gracious.

They also did not expect the rumored quite ill King Herbert to not only be fit enough to come down to attend morning church services so early in the day, but also cordially receive and shake every hand of the representatives of the nations he - in one dominant way or another – had displayed ill will for formerly.

The Danish grandchildren and their nannies and even their younger Princess mothers had happily been recruited by Anna to help Lukas and Olaf round up the naughty snowgies. By the time the tiny creatures, who had been mischievously strewn across the summer countryside, playing in the tall hedges and hopping atop the shaped topiary, were finally returned to Marshmallow's hidden compartments, chapel was to begin.

The Danish princes had gentlemanly escorted the curious guests who had emerged from the castle to file towards the open doors of the bell ringing Egeskov Chapel before the sun was even high in the Southern Isles' sky.

The pleased deacons and nuns who had come in specially from their Odense parish for the King's birthday service by request of Mother Superior, Sister Angelika, were proudly resounding the holy chimes with the newly gathered choir.

"What could be taking your dear mother and sister so long, my Gingersnap?" Trying to keep his cool—literally—King Agdar was nonetheless getting a bit antsy under the collar as he and his youngest girl begin to make their way with the rest of the crowd towards the Chapel when the organ music starts to play.

"No worries, Papa. Elsa just takes forever to get her rouge and eye-shadow make-up on! I'm sure they'll be here real soon. Right, Kristly? Ooh! Where'd you get that new shirt and matching trousers?! I like you all in sunshiny-gold! I think buttery yellow's my favorite color…" Sensing her love approaching intuitively, Anna turns from her kringle fudge donut stuffed mouth to instead salivate on her big blond mountain man wearing the golden uniform of the Egeskov guardsman he had been provided with.

It appeared that somewhere between here and the stables, Kristoff had been provided with an obligatory uniformed shirt and pants from the guardhouse collection. Princess Isabelle had instructed her curious drooling maid, who had been shirking her duties at the refreshment table to ogle the strapping, shockingly bare chested man she had ever seen so undressed, to fetch some more appropriate attire for the entertainers Isabelle believed she had hired for the party.

The stylish Italian lady charmingly detained young Kristoff until he uncomfortably promised to wear what she came up with from the kingdom's guardsman wardrobe.

Fortunately, King Agdar was still digesting her previous statement to hear Anna's un-decorous newlywed murmuring of her tall handsome hubby now sporting a bright yellow uniform jacket and fur-trimmed black helmet under his arm with a drooping feather attached that matched his frowning face at this dress-up farce.

"Rouge? Eye-shadow? Is that some sort of…face…powder? I will not allow any daughter of mine to wear such frivolous—Perhaps I should go up to the castle and personally escort my ladies down here." After the disconcerting thought of his adored children dabbling in face paint and lip gloss that only ladies of the night would dare sport in his time, impatient King Agdar was a bit of his normally paternal self still in the way he treated grown-up Elsa and Anna as if they were still his small children in need of his overbearing guidance and Victorian ideals.

 _But when it comes to my girls' health and well-being, I will always be a concerned parent! Speaking of which…_

"What business did you say you are in, young man?" King Agdar turns his cool attentions to where Anna was buttoning and re-buttoning incorrectly the charcoal silk shirt that Kristoff had just pulled on in exchange for his black Snow Prince cape behind the church awning.

"Umm…" _Gulp_ … Kristoff was sweating under Anna's father's questioning gaze where he stood uncomfortable, squeezed into one of the Royal Egeskov Guard's clothing livery provisions. But the golden yellow and red trimmed supplied guardsman official jacket was a few sizes too small, and one of the borrowed shirt's silver buttons that Anna had incorrectly fastened pop open to reveal his well toned pecs. The gasping ladies filing into the chapel attempt to tear their eyes away, but it would take the piety of a saint to not be interested in the vibrantly colored man in a uniform.

" _Gulp_ … Ice harvesting… Sir." Under his father-in-law's displeased glare, Kristoff's voice raises an octave higher in embarrassment as Anna's rash hands were doing a number on shoving his manly chest to fit into the tight suit jacket. But an enthusiastic to dress up her man Anna secures the red high collar too tight around his bulgy Adam's apple, causing poor Kristoff even further discomfort under her father's scrutiny.

"Hmm… Not very sound an enterprise for a year-round income to support a growing family…" Agdar strokes his ginger mustache as was his habit when he was pondering unsatisfactory data, such as a common working mountain man as this new son-in-law that his younger child had already wed without her parents' unfortunately absent permission.

 _It's a good thing this boy you chose, Anna, turned out to be the Snow Queen's son, or else we might have been forced to pull out the word 'annul'…_

"Hmph. Stay here, Sunshine. I'll be right back with your mother and sister." Impatient King Agdar was still vital enough to be a man of action, rather than wisdom, when at times he was left to his own devices.

"But Papa, wait –" Anna tries to protest when her retreating father physically crashes into another man who happened to have been just walking down the center aisle entering the Egeskov Chapel.

"Excuse me." Chivalrous King Agdar had been calmed down sufficiently by the lovely hymnal music wafting down from the choir apse above to be stable enough to have exchanged civil and attentive words with Anna's… _new husband, hmph_ …

But the Ice King was just about to have his limits tested on another level of cold jealousy.

"Hello, Agdar. It has been a long time. That was quite an entrance you made back there." The sweet voice emitting from the man Agdar had accidentally banged into made Agdar feel all clammy and cool inside before he even turned around see the owner of that smooth tone.

"Do pardon me. I almost forgot myself in all this excitement… _**King**_ Agdar." Second in line Danish Prince Anders amends his initial greeting to the monarch of Norway with a pasty leer on his own debonair face. "How is our dear Idun? What was that I've heard, about you two being the lone survivors of that awful shipwreck?" Anders had a sly simper on his designing face as he inquires about the woman who had dared to refuse his tempting promise of wealth and power in the Danish empire he planned to overtake, and all for this unknown quantity mysterious Norske Crown Prince. Her rejection of their wordlessly understood betrothal, it still left a scar to Anders' vast ego that had not been forgotten.

Although Anna had only guessed that the snobbish _Søværnet_ uniformed Prince was yet another of Hans' _stellar_ older brothers, her Papa instantly recognized the snide voice of his once bitter rival for Idun's hand and affection some twenty-five years ago.

"Anders. Shall we forgo the mandatory titles and niceties of paltry pretences that you, a polished politician are so fond of, and say what we mean to one another for once?" Now that his ice prowess had made itself manifest, Agdar could unleash sentiments that had before been disguised behind gracious good manners. The King of Arendelle instantly switches from worried Papa mode to combative rival mode as the handsome Norwegian sovereign takes an oral swipe at the highest-ranking official in Denmark, the Chancellor of the Danish Parliament himself, without batting an icy blue eye.

After all, Idun was not here to hold Agdar back this time.

"As you wish, _Agdar_. We **should** bare our souls in truth-telling, now that the secret Idun had kept about you all these years has been finally revealed." On the receiving edge of Agdar's bitter ice, Prince Anders confronts his one-time greatest rival with just as much antipathy as oozing the charm of his politician's false pasted smile. He was just about to turn on his tall booted black heel when he pauses to speak quite pointedly in the verbal sparring match with his competitor.

"And may I say, I must commend your wife and yourself for training your eldest child to be so disarmingly cunning and clever when dealing with strangers." Clever Prince Anders tosses out that most enticing little tidbit of info that he was fairly sure would captivate the powerful Norwegian Royal. As predicted, the icy fire behind King Agdar's eyes both foretold Anders of the innate magic's intensity and the fact that the formidable Ice King would not back down from a challenge, if aroused.

 _Interesting…_

"My Elsa? In what way, sir?" Try as he might keep his cool (literally) Agdar could feel the icy hackles on the back of his neck begin to rise at his rivalry still as fresh now as it was then with this Southern Isles' Prince.

"In the younger Queen of Arendelle's intriguing infiltration of our kingdom by way of posing – and quite prettily serving us tea and crumpets, cleaning our fireplace grates and wielding her feather duster – as our new chambermaid. I must admit I was truly impressed to find her acting skills so… _replete_. Where could she have learned such…activities? Now we've found out it was all for the mere sake of my younger brother, Hans, whom she seems to have quite a vested interest in, doesn't she?" Anders dangles this intimation in a leading sentence as more of a male ego challenge to irk the visiting ruler than a statement of musing.

"Chambermaid?!" Just as the disgruntled Ice King was about to totally lose his composure at the sheer thought of the impropriety Anders was insinuating concerning his eldest child, the church organ flares to life. A lute guitar begins the harmonized emotional moving musical intro of Agdar's favorite church hymn when the solemn music switches gears to welcome in the growing congregation.

" _Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me_!" Princess Anna of Arendelle's sweet soprano sings spur-of-the-moment along with Kristoff Bjorgman's intuitive guitar playing and gentle voice backup.

The young couple's harmonization of the poignant hymn quietly sweeps an aura of healing warmth and tenderness of emotion over the slowly filling-to-capacity Egeskov Chapel.

" _I once was lost, but now am found. 'twas blind but now I see_." As 'Krist-anna' sing their placid duet together, their hearts and souls combine in perfect harmony to work some healing magic over King Agdar's jolted heart, that now regains its calm by God's grace.

"' _twas grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace my fears relieved!"_

Agdar's incensed frozen white eyes snap back to their uncommon pale blue and travel upwards. There his little gingersnap was blowing him loving kisses while she was peacefully serenading her beloved Papa with whatever faint strains of her Mama's healing magic that ran through her veins reaching out to him.

King Agdar feels the cold about to rule him ease up momentarily enough for him to collect himself again.

" _How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed_." Hitting the ideal note of a high D in her melodious voice in perfect rhythm with Anna's sweet strains, Queen Idun's warm lyrical soprano completes the Ice King's control back to normal as she flows down the center aisle to her man, sensing his need for her.

Adding her glorious voice and encouraging smile throughout the church to join in Anna and Kristoff's song that goes from handsome Westergaard face to face, King Herbert and Prince Anders included, Queen Idun enters the church beside her sister, Arianna.

His heart at peace now as she takes her rightful place in the pew beside him, Agdar smiles lovingly down to the petite woman. He wonders in awe how his Idun was every bit as beautiful today as she was a blooming flower a quarter century ago when he swept her down another church aisle.

Agdar was too enamored with the amazing grace of his great love still found in her after all these years, that his animosity for Anders was dulled along with the sharpness of his ice. After all, Agdar's tremendous love for his wonderful family superceded any prior masculine rivalry.

With a grateful smile to the choirmaster who allowed their impromptu entry, Anna and Kristoff continue to sing beautiful music together up in the choir apse as this next generation of lovers share a relieved smile to look down over Elsa and Anna's reunited parents.

* * *

 _ **Back in the west end of Egeskov estate's nearly abandoned Beech Garden…**_

The Snuggly Duckling boys, at Lady Cassandra and Captain Schmidt's perverse command, had finally finished giving one dirty dog Eugene Fitzherbert a thorough double dip scrub down in the nearby still water stretch of the Odense River.

The rowdy, oft malicious, mean and scary group of thugs seemed to enjoy dunking their favorite pretty boy playtoy until the poor, sputtering man was quite waterlogged. Then they all left at the whiff of fresh bread and coffee, cackling at the sight of the wet rat they had just subjugated, making the trip here worthwhile.

That left only Job to help Rapunzel pull her heavy water-soaked hubby up from the stream after the cackling lot of attackers had drifted off to enjoy the offerings of the Fuchsia Garden party that had been set out as early morning breakfast, much to the busy servants' chagrin.

"Oh, my poor Eugene! Here, let me towel you down." Rapunzel tugs off her under petticoat made of cotton to wrap around her drenched lover.

"Let's get your shirt and pants off, before you catch your death. The princesses are bringing some new clothes soon." Rapunzel instructs her wet rat of a husband as she passes the little lamb over to Job to start to work in helping Eugene out of his drenched attire.

"Yes, little mother. I think you're enjoying the task too much, Mrs. Fitzherbert." Eugene flirts quite amorously sliding his fingers through Rapunzel's tantalizing cocoa tresses.

"Don't wriggle so much, Eugene. You're making this difficult on purpose, aren't you?" Rapunzel, though frustrated with Flynn's relentless arms trying to snake around her while she was trying to be productive, could not help the pleased smile from etching around her coy smirking features.

"Why don't we play hooky from hobnobbing with all those ritzy people, and just go skinny dipping together, Liebling? You're already halfway there…" A heavy-lidded Eugene amorously tugs at the removed petticoat skirt she was drying him with until a pulled-in Rapunzel was dangerously close to the invitation on his willing lips.

"God knows I deserve a soft break from all this madness, with your tender caresses, after the torture and danger and death I've heroically suffered through these past few weeks…" Making his case quite simply, Eugene huskily murmurs in her ear with a quick nibble.

That made the poor Prussian Princess practically swoon in his arms at the way her Eugene still made everything inside her tickle, even after five years of at times blissful/at times contentious, matrimony.

"Yoohoo! Rapunzel dear! Here are the clothes I promised you! Peiter had grown out of it ages ago, and I've found this extra shirt with it in storage. _Ola, denovo_ (Hello, little lamb)! _Ele e lindo em todos os firmos angulos_! Our newest little brother is gorgeous at every tight angle!" Repeating herself to be understood, Princess Gloria Lujza's big brown eyes flirtatiously widen larger when she gets more than a bird's eye view of Princess Rapunzel's studly thief's real estate.

"I suppose you will not be in need of these clothes until a bit later… But I am glad that you have already relieved your handsome bonito of those wet clothes before they did him harm." With a big cat-ate-the-canary smile, Lujza raises her intrigued eyebrows as a quite butt-naked Eugene was doing his best to avoid her probing stares behind the large tree he was red-faced hiding behind. Her uninhibited gaze was tantalizingly inching around the tree as she handed a pair of trousers to a crimson-cheeked Daphne to hand over to her friend's mate, while Rapunzel was wifely sorting the rest of the men's clothing in the sack.

"Ooh!" The plump little ladies' maid covers her mortified eyes only to peek out shyly up to the uncovered, blushingly shrugging man who sticks his greedy hands out for the fabric body coverings. Daphne then dashes away, tugging a reluctant, sighing Lujza to leave along with her.

"I will see more of you at the party, Lindo ( _good-looking man_ )! Well maybe not more… _grr-_ _rroar_ - _,_ you lucky Princess!" Lujza sends Rapunzel a final departing wink, as more refined in modest sensibilities Daphne tugs the growling Portuguese beauty the remainder of the way towards the church.

"What do I gotta do to get a little privacy around here? Beware, my little wife, these ladies of Egeskov can't get enough of my natural charms, it seems." Eugene says with more than a touch of self-assured vanity as he now unabashedly emerges nearly _au naturel_ to pull Rapunzel's lithe little body to his bare flesh.

"Eugene! Aren't you naughty? Someone else may come and see us here!" Enjoying some of her husband's friendly fondling, despite her protests, Rapunzel was glad their new friend Job had the good grace to take himself and the horses Maximus and Sitron, to be unhitched from the wagon cart on the main drive, to leave the married couple alone to their activities.

"Nah! This monstrous tree's got us covered, _mein liebste_ (my dearest). Besides…everyone else should be in the chapel about now…" Eugene was taking advantage of his male dominance that Rapunzel had so exquisitely missed as she slides her artistic hands along his broad hairy chest.

"So should we… I think…" But Rapunzel loses her integrity to do the proper thing against Flynn Rider's intoxicating kisses here against the humongous plane tree that was shading them quite nicely from the bright morning sunlight, as well as any further spectators.

"Well, you and I can do our praying out here in the Creator's great outdoor cathedral…" As the thief tries to alleviate his pious little woman's doubts with some of his own brand of irreverent preaching, Eugene suddenly feels a fuzzy little creature rub against his exposed ankles to begin to lick and nuzzle at his muscular sinewy calves.

"You have got some timing, garlic breath." Eugene's annoyed eyes glance down to see that woolly mammoth of a little lamb that his merciful wife had retrieved from the no-man's-land of Mosken Island nuzzling his ankle, and within kicking distance.

"Baa-ah!" The flitting fuzzball makes its cutesy-wootsy presence known and trots away to safety some paces behind Flynn's bare back. Rapunzel, as predicted, as he rolls his eyes, abandons 'dressing' her husband to rush over and kneel down to hug her new pet instead of him.

"Ooh, Lambykins! Where have you been?! Your Mama's missed you! Look, Eugene! Lamby's found us!" Going all sticky-gooey in total tone and mood shift Rapunzel lifts her little lamb for her exasperated husband to see, too.

"I can't believe this _lamb chop_ survived the ride all the way up here." Slitting his eyes downward with the sour realization that his original game plan for the unwanted creature to have been dinner for the Snuggly Duckling thugs had gone awry, Eugene tactfully leaves off the second half of his train of thought that went something more like _: 'Can't I rely on those guys for even baking a simple mutton pie?'_ Eugene ponders as he starts to tug on the pair of socks that Rapunzel had tossed at his head, as if his sweet _frau_ (wife) had read his vindictive mind when it came to this annoying little sheep.

But Eugene was too high class for that now, plus he did not wish to turn down any passion in his bighearted young lover and get her vexed at him again enough to withhold her many pleasures. Well, at least for now, until pregnancy got too much in the way…

 _I have stayed up nights wondering about that since my beautiful bride unloaded the happy pitter-pattering news to me…I suppose…I have a load of older brothers now to discuss the delicate subject with, if we get around to kicking up some beers later like real bros do… Yeah, right. I could just see me doing that with those stiff-necked, stuck-up, royal pains in the –_

"Eugene, hurry up and put on your pants and shirt. **We** are **going** to church." Wearing the proverbial pants in this family, Rapunzel had made a decision, pulling on her petticoat again to Eugene's dismay and placing her authoritative hands on her shapely hips.

" _Ja, Liebes_." (Yes, dear.) Eugene capitulates to her command and reels in his raging hormones with a sigh. He makes a twisted lip at the fancy tails of the snazzy velvet suit he runs his hands over.

"Why not?" With a shrugged sigh, Eugene's considering eyes glaze over Egeskov Castle as he allows his Princess fair to dress him up in a mulberry red silk shirt and double-breasted black frock coat that one or another of his new Storbrors had grown out of tailoring.

 _What the hell! I've got full run of this joint, according to good ole Pops. Looks like a nice luxury castle with a view we can use for a second honeymoon spot, after the birthday party… That's when the real celebration begins, Liebling… No sheep counting allowed in our bedroom tonight… A man's gotta put his foot down somewhere…_

Eugene rather enjoyed stomping his big foot into a pair of black boots that screamed Danish Navy boy all over it.

 _I do wonder how my one and only Lillebror of our illustrious clan is doing with his leggy conquest now that all the ice chips have fallen_ …

"Hey, speak of the redheaded devil!" Just as he was pulling on his long tail jacket and Rapunzel was doing up his frilly white cravat tie, Flynn catches a familiar figure cutting across Egeskov's ample green lawns, though an undaunted Hans merely casts him an uneasy glance.

"Hey, Sideburns! Ain't the church in the other direction? Where are you hightailing it to, with such a purposeful stride? You didn't get into the doghouse again with the clan while I was indisposed, did you, Kid?" Eugene goes on a rant that Rapunzel found entirely adorable in her man wearing a comely royal uniform that she never imagined seeing her thieving rogue in.

With a quirky smile etched on her pretty face, Rapunzel slaps her man's tight tush beneath his velveteen jacket's black tails, for teasing his little brother, where she was dressing him up behind the tall plane tree.

"Fine. Ignore me now that you're all high and mighty, upper-crust elitist, reinstated in your snooty family's bosom again, Handsome! _I_ _guess they're my family too, the surly lot of them, damnit_." Eugene adds the murmur with a not-entirely-pleased grimace.

"Not to mention having a gal with a figure like a porcelain doll throwing herself at you, with marriage proposals and all, beneath those inviting batting long lashes. Maybe that's where you're heading." Eugene curiously watches Hans approach Job and swiftly mount his golden fjord horse Sitron with his long legs easily slung over the fjord horse in one impressively smooth move.

"I just pray her generous good name and reputation have not been tarnished too irrevocably in public, Sitron. Our beautiful Queen Elsa deserves so much more than me. I must put all of my mind's resources to a proper solution in order to spare her from this unfortunate entanglement." Hans whispers in Sitron's velvety ear, the equine nodding in his agreement of adoration for Elsa. But with a snort, the noble steed shakes his head also in compassion for his dearly loved boy whom Sitron had horse sense enough to see was madly in love with the Queen of both their hearts.

And crazy enough to try to let go of her.

Not Eugene's humorous comments, nor Sitron's silent, yet warm advice could rally Hans out of his pickled mood. The youngest Danish prince murmurs to his trusted friend in total despair intermingled with apprehensive fear at Elsa's summoning him to meet with her alone.

Her Aunt Arianna had informed the young prince that he was to come to the furthest garden of Egeskov overlooking the Odense fjord that eventually ran out towards the Great Belt of the North Sea. To his disheartened mind, still in a whirlwind daze, this could only mean that Elsa wished to quietly unburden herself of this nuisance without public fanfare.

She must, as any proper young lady should, reasonably prefer to discuss this ruse engagement in seclusion to figure out a way to gracefully bow out of the betrothal. The pure hearted Queen of Arendelle must've only claimed to accept his troth with the singular purpose to save his inadequate self from severe punishment in a lifetime incarceration or worse in that trial, according to the harsh Danish code of laws involving the treason he was accused of.

Surely, it was inconceivable to Hans' logic for Queen Elsa to have any ulterior motive more than good Christian charity.

 _Why else would she do this much for me? After all my wrongs…_

With Hans lost in his own defeatist thoughts, it was up to Sitron to slow his gallop to a canter when a colorful bright red-orange chameleon's small vivid outline beckoned the alert dun stallion to approach the renowned Water Garden on Egeskov's northern grounds.

The still morning's quiet profusion of azaleas, wild rhododendrons and green ferns in the last full bloom of summer lined the path of this pristine layout. In this secluded garden overlooking the sea, a scenic flower bowery softly penetrated the small trickling water cataracts that met the Hagerup extension of the Odense River that carried out to the sea.

As flawlessly polished Prince Hans Westergaard dismounts his faithful steed, his first step upon the Water Garden's peaceful silence made him feel as if he had taken a step back into his lonely childhood. This distant edge of the estate garden was one of his hidden haunts where his older brothers never could hear him crying his eyes out over their cruelty.

Though he had not visited this spot in years, his most preferred of all Egeskov's ten gardens, surrounded by secretive hedgerows that gave the attractive concealed area a sense of mystery, Hans still counted it as one of his favorite places on earth.

The pair of little waterfall cataracts that miraculously gave a continuous flow throughout the Southern Isles' late spring and summer months, always took a young Master Hans' breath away. Just staring into their slowly sprinkling waters ebbing into the greater sea made the boy feel that even the smallest, least important could find its freedom in this wide world someday.

As a child, the solitary boy would often run and hide in this recessed ' _haunted garden'_ that none of his older brothers dared to enter after they chased him into its disturbing silence with their spiteful, malevolent tales that could make any small child's skin crawl.

Their ghoulish stories told of a beautiful foreign baroness recluse in their long Danish genealogy past who had supposedly vanished without a trace as she overlooked the mountain swept sea. The shunned woman was said to have perished here in the cold in wait for her love who would never return to her again.

The rest of the Westergaard boys, though none would ever admit it, all steered clear of this section of Egeskov's vast grounds. They were terrified of the lady's ghost that legend had singing eerily on the winds of this garden ledge, at certain hours of the day for no apparent reason.

His ruthless big brothers had vindictively tried to scare Hans out of his wits since the day he was born with tales of frightening dolls in the attic, malignant monsters in the moat and fearsome werewolves hiding in the hedgerows. But, even at the tender age of three or four, that romantic tale, above all the others, did not frighten this curious about anything concerning the unknown subject of 'love' for this reviled young child.

The idea of an outcast lady's ghost wailing for her one true love to return to her made a rather romantic figure for little Hans' own idealistic youthful heart to make an imaginary friend with.

 _No, I won't let them scare me into being the weakling they think I am_. Conversing with himself in solitude all those years ago, tiny Prince Hans decided then and there never to be afraid of anything, not monsters, not werewolves, nor ghosts.

In subsequent years to his being shipped off to the convent boarding school, the red-haired young Prince had only been permitted in all his youth to return to the castle of his birth for one summer. It was after his graduation from primary school before he would be inducted into the _Søværnets Officersskole_ , the naval Academy that all royal young men in Denmark attended on-demand by birthright.

An outcast from the house and even the stable area where cruel fencing teacher Count Rügen held court, teenager Hans had again spent most of that short summer here in Egeskov, before Academy, in this garden. He had spent many an hour honing his swordplay skills on these perilous cliffs, all whilst dreaming of a distant love of his own to take him far away.

And she had taken shape, since last he was here as a weepy little boy, into the wispy figure of a beautiful blonde princess from the North, who filled this cocksure, handsome and ready-to-take-on-the-world youth's every maturing sense with longing.

This romantic young teen just on the cusp life appreciated the chance to come and listen to the wailing woman at the waterfall on the whistling winds for her unearthly mournful sound. It was almost comforting to his own lamenting heart then that yearned for a deep love of his own. A love that he was determined to earn with his self-taught refined charm, honed looks, astute acumen and impressive proficiency, no matter how many years at sea it took to earn enough salary to gain her affection someday.

A cool wind strikes his stunning features awake to the present, as the most beautiful apparition of delicate tender grace and awe-inspiring rare gifts combined greets Hans' eyes. The beauteous vision of the Queen of Arendelle still left him senseless a thousand times more each time he saw her.

Hans' chest can't help from filling with puffed up delight to glimpse her entrancing figure awash in a glow of purples and golds in her stately regal dress silhouetted in the morning sunlight.

 _Are you real? Or just an ephemeral dream?_ Hans almost could not tell until her stunning azure eyes encompass him with the surreal warmth.

"Y-You… called for me… My Queen? Are you well, I pray?" Confused, anxious, and more than a little ashamed for all she had been put through for his meager expense, Prince Hans uncharacteristically stumbles over his opening words. His nervous, stiffened legs carry his agile body to seamlessly leap and climb up the moss-covered rocky ledge to the landing where Elsa was aglow in her violet velveteen, elegantly standing atop the small waterfall.

Her lovely pale features had her eyes closed as if listening intently to the trickling rush of water for a particular sound that seemed calling out for her to come to this spectacular spot.

But when Elsa opens her eyes to watch her gorgeous prince emerge so gallantly up to the waterfall's edge, her breath hitches in her throat, at the thrilling 'eighth wonder of the world' sight of his attractive beauty.

"Oh, Hans! You're here!" Having glimpsed her man in the distance racing to her beckon on his noble steed, Elsa's pale cheeks color to a pretty pink now that her hero had arrived. "I know we're quite alone here with everyone else gathered at the chapel… But I thought I heard someone singing in this direction… My curiosity must have gotten the better of me." Elsa gazes out over the precipice ledge she was standing on to view the scenic ocean of snowcapped mountains beyond the rolling waves.

In these glorious heights that reached high up into the endless blue sky over Denmark, Elsa felt as free as the birds traversing the horizon. In her head, she hears her mother's encouraging words and sees Anna sunny smile spur her to press forward into this previously frightening unknown of exploring her heart.

"Nevermind. I must just sound silly. Anna would be laughing with me were she here now, chasing will o' the wisps like when we were little girls in Arendelle." With a buoyant smile, Elsa focuses her luxuriant gaze upon Hans, startling him with by how open and carefree easy her eyes alight upon him.

Elsa looks Hans up and down approvingly, thinking how amazing it was that there could be such a beautiful man whom she felt so deeply about. He still took her breath away wearing his debonair dark blue Sjoforsvaret naval uniform she had endowed him with as he takes several long legged strides over to her.

Hans resembled, with his hair catching fire in the morning sun, a combination between a Grecian god and a dashing Prince from a far-flung fairytale story she never would admit to have read in between her voluminous textbooks as a young girl.

"But so much as happened today. So much excitement, I think she would allow me this moment of frivolity." Elsa smiles warmly of her sister who had encouraged her to be brave enough to face this moment as she blows a loose strand of her platinum hair back to her primly coiffed chignon bun.

Elsa subconsciously chuckles at herself for getting caught up in curiosity, feeling quite mortified have anyone see her in this ridiculous flight of fancy more befitting imaginative Anna then her levelheaded, staid big sister.

But her Hans wasn't just ' _anyone'_ to Elsa, not anymore. The blushing, nymph-like Queen lowers her eyes and looks up at him with a coquettish, yet embarrassed glance.

The lilting tinkle of her crystalline laughter ringing in his ears made Hans wish to pull 'his' Elsa close and embrace her. But he knew that he – no matter what had transpired on this day of days – must remain deferential and detached, and not lose the control of his emotions, just as a young Prince Hans long ago conditioned himself to establish.

Extracting himself from her inviting look, Hans takes courteous step back and breaks her gaze, a serious expression on his somber countenance.

"I daresay your sister would not be laughing—as you state—were she aware that I was here with you, entirely alone, your Majesty." With a comely, quick smile, Hans bows his eyes reverently to the Norwegian Queen he takes another step backwards from her.

"Hans. Now you're being silly. Don't you see? Anna came all this distance of her own volition in _**search**_ of you. To make certain you were safe after you left us without explanation, so deathly injured after gallantly fighting the beast in that fierce battle I've discovered. You want to know why she came here to the Southern Isles? She cares. Because she knows I care." Elsa looks shyly through her luscious long lashes up at Hans with the explanation.

"Then I came on my kingdom's behalf to bring its new hero home…where you belong… with us. After all, you still are a top brass officer in our Navy, Vise Admiral. Even though it appears you _are_ being welcomed and recognized at last here in your own nation." A pleased Elsa speaks with a tenderness backed up with a teasing statement as she fingers the Sjoforsvaret uniform jacket's bars and stripes at his chest.

But it was breaking Hans' heart beneath those service rank device decorations at the expectant way Elsa was demurely gazing up at him after a sneaky glance down at her left-hand ring finger that touches a hand to his shoulder with a caress.

"You didn't have to go through all that for me back in the courtroom, Queen Elsa. Please know that I _do_ appreciate your charitable sentiment—more than I can ever express. Perhaps father is of a more agreeable nature towards me now and it's only due entirely to your intervention, my lady. So now I can explain the circumstance of how you sacrificed yourself in that pledge of our betrothal merely to satisfy the court for my own and the other defendants' benefit. Of course, I will not hold you to this promise, and will do my utmost to untangle and release you from this altruistic proposal of yours as painlessly as possible." Hans, refusing to meet Elsa's eyes, was already formulating clever routes to allow Queen Elsa to be freed of what must be insalubrious-for-her entanglement before the Danish court and other world leaders who had witnessed the Queen of Norway's claim that she and Prince Hans were engaged to be married.

"But I don't wish you to release me!" A sudden cold front freezes solid the surface of the now verglas iced waterfall as the Ice Queen blurts out, her emotions enraged to be so challenged. "This feeling between us isn't a charade…" Immediately Elsa meaningfully touches a hand to her heart that was beating with unequaled warmth, aroused only by this singular man before her. She reaches her cool hand out to touch his jaw, with a beaming smile that only denoted her pure love for him.

That unrepressed action makes Prince Hans blush even deeper, if that was possible, his fists clenching to pull away from Elsa's welcome touch.

"Que— Elsa. I could never thank you enough for what you have already sacrificed for my sake." Swallowing hard as he begins his preface, Hans corrects his address of her name midstream with a submissive guilty smile traced on his lips to her demanding eyes. With a sweeping, deferential bow, Hans begins to slowly approach the subject, halting Elsa's shaking head with a gloved hand up in the still air. "Traveling here to Egeskov, belittling yourself to pose as a maidservant here, putting yourself through trials and in much danger with that scoundrel Count Rügen _–May God have mercy on his corrupt soul_ —" Hans demonstrated even further to Elsa the truth of his repentance in his pity for even that foul creature who abused Hans all through his young life.

"—You even displayed unbelievable bravery to confront my aloof Father and brothers with your discerning words that somehow allowed them to accept me as part of the Westergaard family, after all these empty years." The lifelong exile takes a deep exhale at the incredible thought with consternation on his handsome brow, as Hans considers case by case in circumspect everything that this slender, yet indomitably strong, wisp of an icy maiden, had accomplished for him.

Then the overwhelmed man thoughtfully spills out the tormented side of what has been laid upon his heart. "But this. _**Us**_. This is all wrong. I have been wracking my insufficient brain to find some solution to extricate you from this utter kindness you have bestowed upon me, without having you lose any face or respectability of your good name. I've come to the conclusion that right after church I will speak to my father – whom you alone made it possible to look kindly upon me, for once in my life – I could never thank you enough for that blessing from the bottom of my heart – to clear this misunderstanding before he spreads the word of our erroneous betrothal." Pigheaded that he knew better than she, caught up in the moment, Hans does not let Elsa get a word in edgewise until he is forced to take a breath.

"Hans! Listen to me! It's not only 'kindness.' Any woman would do as much-and more- for the man she—" With sweet pink rosettes forming upon her alabaster cheeks, Elsa tugs beseechingly on his jacket's sleeve as she was about to admit the sentiment of love to the one man she felt liberated to fully open her heart up to.

But with a resigned smile, Prince Hans shakes his head, staving her off.

"—Elsa, I cannot, any longer, subject you to the burden of me. I can't allow this illusion that your pure heart makes me out to be some mythical hero. This 'betrothal' must be anathema to you, and I release you from any obligation to it. I know your well-meaning intentions were to unshackle me. You did that, in every way possible, and for that I am forever grateful, Your Majesty. But Princess Anna was right. I was—and am— the villain of your story. Why should you now trust me enough to pledge yourself to marry me? Why would you even consider going through with what must be such abhorrence to you?" Reverting back to his proper address, Hans lifts Elsa's hand that had come to rest on his, eyes motioning towards the snowflake diamond engagement ring that fit so perfectly on her left hand finger with a negative head shake.

"Because I have forgiven you—" Elsa meets his repentant eyes, undeterred by his objections as she hears her mother's words that he simply needed more reassuring than she. But Hans puts a halting gentle finger to her tender lips.

"You can't mean that, Elsa. Not after all the unforgivable things that I did to you and your sister and your kingdom. I don't know if Anna ever told you the full extent of my wickedness two years ago, but I cannot continue to deceive you with only what must seem my heroism in the face of danger as you see in me now. You must be aware of all the facts of my depraved heart before you offer your pure one so readily to it, in folly." With this soul-searching statement, so many emotions play across Hans Westergaard's stunning, obscenely handsome features as he turns his back and takes a deep breath before speaking again in full disclosure.

"Elsa. I have a confession to make to you about why Princess Anna has held despise for me, and deservedly so, that I, in my guilt, am compelled to admit." Fast and fervently, the Danish Prince had a heavy weight over his heart that he felt obliged to admit the truth of to the one woman he ever loved, who was also one of two women he had deeply wronged.

"I realize that you and Princess Anna are close – as close as sisters rightly should be. I do deserve her scorn and hatred for being the bully towards her, that I always was treated as in my life. But that can never be an excuse for what I did to either of you. I am entirely to blame, and wish to accept all punishment for what I attempted to do. I am unworthy a match for you, my Queen. I suppose I always have been… My entire life has been a lie, culminating in a foul act of cowardice and corruption, born of necessity in a desire to escape my life. But now…I won't allow you to suffer me again." Hans hangs his head as low as his distraught sprit felt.

"Hans…" Elsa interjects sympathetically, but Hans holds up a gloved hand with a resigned look crossing his discontented face.

"Please…please allow me to further explain." His green eyes beseech her imploringly, causing an understanding Elsa to patiently refrain her protestations and give the nervous man time and space to compose himself to articulate all that's been strangling his heart.

"Two years ago, my life had become so unbearable with my Father, brothers and Master Rugen's disdain for me here in Egeskov. It became even more intense when they refused to sponsor me for any future arrangement with any other royal house, as was my right as a Danish royal son. After speaking unfavorably with my older brother Kaleb, in my sickly father's stead, and then appealing to my storbror Anders, who also scorned me, I knew that every one of my dreams and hopes to leave the Southern Isles to attempt to court you, the Crown Princess of Norway, were dashed. With little wherewithal of my own, other than the most unsavory, thirteenth-in-line son rank that meant practically nothing, everything rode on the idea that if I was to marry above my low station, it would have to be of my own accord and resources. My idealistic sights were still set northerly. My entire future was predicated by my outlandish hope that one day I would meet my beautiful little princess from the naval times article, and she would fall in love with me and want me to wed her and let me share in her beautiful home, her beautiful kingdom, her beautiful life, and I could then hold my head up high and show my brothers and father I wasn't worthless. I wasn't the 'throwaway'. The little girl who was not only the right age for me, not only prettiest creature with the most gorgeous eyes I had ever seen, not only possessed a loving family I wished to be part of, but she, as future Queen, would be able to take **me** away from my sorrowful world. When we heard of the King and Queen of Arendelle's shipwreck, I genuinely felt sorrow for you, your sister and your kingdom for so great a loss. While I was thinking this, my brother, Lars, informed me that this could perhaps be my chance. I realized what he inferred-that you would soon become Queen and would most likely be looking for a consort. Everyone knew of your kingdom long closing its gates to all visitors, so even if I could find some way show up on your doorstep, I knew my dream had only one chance, one day, to be realized. I **had** to be the one to attend your Coronation." With wild eyes at the recollection of his desperation then, Hans pauses in his long soliloquy, still unable to meet Elsa's serene, compassionate eyes.

"In my heady days, I had planned a thousand ways of making myself presentable enough for a Queen—excelling in my studies, fencing, becoming adept at negotiation and treaties, horseback riding, swordplay, art and music—oh just about everything and anything I thought would impress you and **make** you notice me. I had to be 'perfect' in a queen's eyes to make up for my low station. I did it all to the best of my abilities and more, so that I was sure that you would immediately fall for my indisputable good looks, irrefutable intelligence and undeniable charm. I thought of nothing else for months and devoted myself entirely to this far-off goal. But as the years went by, and your gates never opened, my prospects of establishing a life for myself were dwindling. So the challenge of making Arendelle my conquest became a great obsession." His eyes trained on the slowly crashing waves below, Hans gives a little bit of a scoffed huff at his own built up overconfidence as a teenager. But on some lonely nights spent studying by candlelight onboard ships that would never be a home, it was all that kept the unwanted youth going.

"The time finally came, and though I made a petition early on, it was little heeded as anticipated. It was decided by Kaleb and Anders that Rune, as the next unmarried son, would be the Southern Isles Prince who would represent our kingdom at your Coronation. He would be the one to attempt to woo and beg your hand, with our silver tongued older brother Anders as a convincing advocate. When I heard that, I suppose I went a little mad. You have no idea what extremes I sank to in order to ensure that I would be the sole Danish representative at that time to meet you."

"What did you do?" Elsa felt spellbound by Hans' eloquent description of his past emotional upheaval that led up to that important pivotal moment in both their intermingled rebellious histories.

"Suffice it say that I have become quite adept at locating – shall we say – 'natural toxic cultivations' from the greenery around these ample gardens that I had made myself a student of well enough to utilize. I can never forgive myself for mixing just the right amount of foxglove I had acquired in the forestry area into all of my brothers' breakfast that fateful July morning. Just enough to sicken the digestion and afflict confusion, but not enough to permanently damage or be fatal _._ I did it so none of them, Rune especially, could be fit to travel to Norway and represent our kingdom for your important event, save the one Prince who was not welcome at their breakfast table. And that beleaguered prince, swooping into the castle, feigning shock, when every one else came down with illness, was 'just in the nick of time' to gain hearty approval to attend and board the royal ship as a fortuitous knight in shining armor for once in his life, allowing the Royal family and nation to still have their representative to your Coronation. He replaced Rune, who came down with an especially terrible case of the incapacitating, inexplicable stomach illness. Namely, that wily prince was me." Hans guiltily looks up with sheepish eyes at Elsa with this soul baring confession he never thought he would tell to another living being, lest he be ostracized from the kingdom.

 _Oh, I already was_.

"But I deserve whatever punishment that criminal act warrants, too. In fact, I welcome it." Hans murmurs allowed, overlooking the ocean, knowing that surely one, if not all, of his twelve Storbrors would not be so forgiving if they knew their youngest sibling had once purposely tainted their food in order to be the only fit and healthy one left standing.

His pure-hearted queen must be appalled at this latest and previously hidden revelation of his immoral bleak heart.

"Oh, my poor Hans." But Elsa felt more pity for his crimes as a cry from the heart than true wickedness, as she wraps her arms around his tall straight back in empathy. "You must have wanted to meet me so badly to have done that. And then how I shunned you when you tried to speak to me at the reception. You were too handsome and gentlemanly; I was frightened, even threatened. I was too wrapped up in my own problems then to be considerate to anyone else's." Elsa gives a little shiver involuntarily, thinking of that time when they had first opened up the gates after thirteen long empty years.

The Ice Queen buries her face into Hans' warm back for comfort now.

"When you told me in that cold dungeon that you couldn't end the eternal winter after I begged you to, I think I panicked. I never in my wildest imaginings thought you couldn't stop your winter. My dream was frozen in ice, unattainable, as my harsh lifetime of being ridiculed, reviled, scorned, and perhaps sentenced, when I returned was catching up to me. I thought that, even then, if you could just stop the winter, all would be well, and I could make you love me yet. I couldn't let any harm come to you, but despite my best efforts, it all came crashing down around me. But I couldn't let the people be hurt either. My mind was torn. My beautiful Princess of the North, whom I held on such a pedestal, had rejected me, left me rudderless." Remembering that awful emotion at that time, Hans smiles wanly to the woman embracing his back with all her might now.

"Perhaps my share of the Westergaard inheritance is the urge to grasp control for myself. When I lost my dream of a life with you – a true, good life beyond my desolate island of a soul – I lost myself. My heart, my senses were in freefall. So I just gave in and told myself I could be a hero to the people at least. I could save _them_. Then, I would be loved at last and revered. So I steeled myself to do the unthinkable. And if it hadn't been for Anna…I would have done it. God help me, I would have done it!" Here Hans chokes the words out, purposefully detangling himself to step away from Elsa's clinging form. After he took a moment to compose himself, he managed to utter one last sentence. "I **was** weak and evil in the end. There is absolutely no excuse for my reprehensible behavior. Not then, not now. I deserve all your contempt and disgust—not your compassion. I am destined to be alone and reviled—it's justice!"

"I've never seen a braver, more courageous man, Hans. No one is 'destined to be alone'. Anna taught me that." The platinum beauty quietly observes, wishing she could assuage his self-doubt with some truthful cosseting.

Turning to face her, Hans swallows hard the lump in his throat as he finds it increasingly difficult to meet Elsa's crystal clear eyes that still extended charitable hope for him.

 _How could you still trust a chameleon like me? No offense, dear Pascal._ Hans' quick mind, though torn in a million directions, spies the small reptile peering over the hedge. Pascal, bug-eyed when caught, immediately goes an inconspicuous shade of fuchsia to match the flowers dotting the garden. Alert Hans offers the chameleon a wan smile, multitasking before he returns to his mental meanderings.

 _I myself never am sure of whom I am each morning. I have proven that I can be a shape shifter, so cool and callous without a second thought in my cleverness. Try as I might not to bend to the wickedness the Sisters at the convent impressed upon me as a youth to deny..._

"Allow me to confess an even darker secret of my heart to the one angel beauty who my tainted soul can never hope to deserve." Closing his green eyes, Hans' repentant mind was at last prepared to tell Elsa of the deepest, darkest secret that had been haunting him for these two years, holding him back.

For he was absolutely sure this was the final, indefensible nail in the coffin that would drive her to abhor him completely. But he must make a clean breast of it now, or forever be fettered to it.

"When the Eternal Winter had its deepest grip over Arendelle, and it was indicated that I, being the one Princess Anna left in charge, was to be relied upon to lead your good people in your absence, it all went to my head. I lashed out at your sister when she returned to the castle, claiming to be half-frozen at your hand. Believing any hope for you to be reinstated as ruler gone, I foresaw a kingdom of my own that would be left to me as Anna's successor to rule in her absence. I not only brazenly literally poured cold water over her fire, but also on her innocent hope that still believed I cared for her, when, I am ashamed to admit now, I never did. She was merely my 'in' to the castle. I realized there and then in my cold calculating heart, that if it was only true love that could save her, it was fruitless for me, a boy who never knew love, to even try. So like a coward, I left her alone there to die." The crestfallen Danish Prince forlornly shakes his head at his unpardonable past cruelty to an innocent girl whose only mistake was to trust him with her naïve heart.

 _Just like that._

"If then I claimed to the visiting ambassadors and eventually the Arendelle Council that Princess Anna had died **after** we exchanged our marriage vows, it would make me more inherently the next-in-line, more invaluable in their eyes to assume control of your kingdom. I was the one who was so desperate, scheming to marry Anna just to gain entry into your bright shining kingdom, when all I knew was harsh darkness before. I foolishly taunted her, arrogantly played the bully for once in my persecuted life, with my delusional thirst for power at that point, caught up in the browbeating of her, I even said that I would have to ' _arrange an accident'_ for you just to hurt her even more, though it wasn't true. In that madness, I turned my back on the only one person in the universe I selfishly thought could save me from a lifetime of misery, thinking I could get there by my own grasping machinations. Everything I spent my entire existence trying to accomplish disintegrated like cracked ice, melting through my useless fingers..." Hans removes his white glove to stare at his bare, guilty hand in major self-recrimination until it balls into a fist. Livid at himself, Hans smacks that angry fist into the rocky overhang, banging his bared hand against the jagged rocks until they stung and bled with the smallest smattering of the depth of pain he felt inside.

"Hans, don't." Kneeling to his side, in a hushed whisper, Elsa immediately ices over Hans' bleeding knuckles to staunch the self-inflicted wound on his right hand. After several seconds, she silently bestows tender snowflake kisses upon it as she replaces his white glove in hopes of providing some warmth to his wrist and fingers.

"But Elsa… I left Anna to die and tried to kill you all in the hope of making myself a hero in your country's eyes. I gave up my dream in exchange for what I believed then was all I could do to just so I could finally find a place of my own to belong. Even if it meant living in the cold, harsh, unforgiving reality of lies, I selfishly chose to sacrifice you and Anna to make myself into something I wasn't! I became what I hated most—a bully. So I deserve every punishment, not your kindness!" Hans bursts out vehemently, after giving a sad, honest recount of all the angst of that time of his great betrayal to the two women in the world he now would never do anything to hurt.

But the blunt truth must be told to Elsa, of all people, if the truth was the only way to set her free of the be-deviling affliction of him.

Speechless at his sincere declaration of guilt, Elsa stares at Hans in stunned silence for a few moments. In the hushed silence where only the trickling little waterfalls behind dared utter a sound, she watches how her handsome prince's genuinely tortured soul was still holding on to the deep regret and lamenting remorse.

The deep-thinking young woman realized that this would never let him go the rest of his life if she didn't have the courage right now to prove that love not only melts a frozen heart, but it also was the only remedy to conquer all sorrow.

"Hans? Look at me. Do you not believe that each and every word our Lord spoke is truth? It is the repentant and merciful heart that God's mercy favors most of all. A truly penitent soul cleansed by God's righteousness, is the one most blessed." Elsa signifies her belief in repentance and mercy when she lifts her father's Arendelle cloak that she had laid on a nearby rock – for the Queen of ice had little need of it in her desire to soak up the sun's rays – to place it comfortingly around Hans' trembling form. The artistic eyed young woman can't help but give her handsome prince wearing her own country's dashing uniform an approving smile that warmed the uncertain man's heart more than the fine grey wrappings.

"But how could I ever ask or expect you to forgive such a terrible sin against the sister you love?" Shivering like a lonely, bereft child again, Hans stares down at his white gloved hands after confessing his heart's past wrongs to the one woman he loved honestly and unconditionally, now far more than the fantasized dream angel of his childhood.

There he saw only the bloody shadow of sinful shame and stained hands that were far too unworthy to ever touch her pale skin's purity ever again, as a sudden dark cloud passes overhead.

A troubled Hans is so shamed by Elsa's benevolence that he retracts into himself inside the gray cloak she fastened around his shivering body, coldly pulling away from her kind touches. His gaze stares blindly at the trickling waterfall that ran moisture over the cold rocks and carried jagged pebbles downward that mirrored his own convoluted emotional rockslide.

"In God's eyes one sin is as adverse as the other. We are all sinners in the sight of Heaven, and in need of a Savior, for we cannot save ourselves. We have ALL broken the Commandments in one point or another and so need redemption. Our Lord gave His life on my behalf—on your behalf—on anyone who trusts in Him. I've seen your genuine remorse, and how you demonstrate Jesus' selfless love time and time again, Hans." Elsa lifts her chin, speaking honestly and with startling clarity.

"You and I, with our confused, lonely pasts full of misfit aching, are so much the same. The only difference is I've had Anna as a friend to help me through my rough times of self-loathing and you had no one. I know now _you_ have been battling it all on your own, my poor boy. But we don't have to be alone anymore. What we had both forgotten, in our fear and self-pity, is that our Lord is always with us—if we only open the door and let Him in. I have begged His forgiveness in sincerity and I know He has forgiven me—so much so, He died for me! So how could I do any less? How could I **not** forgive you?" Elsa fiercely continues, truth ringing in her every confident word.

"I **have** forgiven you, completely, fully, and Anna has told me that she's forgiven you, too. More importantly than either of us, is that you have God's forgiveness—I've seen your writings and I know you have asked Him for it, truly and humbly. If you ask and believe, He freely gives. If God has forgiven you, can't you forgive yourself?" Tilting her head sweetly, a plaintive Elsa gazes at Hans with an encouraging smile.

"I know you and I can belong to one another, if we both accept that the true magic of forgiveness is… _ **Love**_ …" With this profound statement on her glossy magenta lips, Elsa transforms into her pale blue ice dress before Hans' bewitched eyes as she pulls his trembling body close again into her ardent, comforting embrace.

Despite his best efforts to remain stoic and manly, the lost little boy inside Prince Hans of the Southern Isles begins to weep onto her heaving breast.

"Please, my darling Hans. Please just…let it go." Ice Queen Elsa herself was not shivering at all with the heart wrenching revelation of his hidden guilt. Instead, Elsa rather sensed a feeling of unmitigated warmth rise inside her chest. Preferring to be honest with herself in her true form, Ice Queen gown in all its shining bejeweled crystal, sparkling glory, in order to persuade him to be himself, too.

In his anguished confession, Elsa had glimpsed Hans Westergaard's inner soul now completely, and was relieved to finally comprehend the reason why her prince's true heart had been shrinking away from her all this time. But his past guilt and shame were triumphed by his present virtue and courage in her love stricken and merciful eyes.

Elsa cups Hans' perfectly formed chin towards her to gain his tremulous viridescent green eyes' reticent gaze upon her fully, her moistened lips parting invitingly.

He looks up hopelessly at the lost dream she represented, involuntarily wrapping his arms around Elsa's waist, as his yearning mouth inches closer to hers. But before they make contact, Hans deliriously shakes his muddled head and he forces his enthralled senses awake from this thrilling ecstasy that should not be his.

"Elsa… You–I–we–can't. You deserve so much better than me." Hans murmurs into her palms as he adoringly kisses them before he draws back to pull away from her tempting embrace with a resigned rueful smile etched on his comely face.

"Hans, please–" A tranquil Elsa is taken aback when she is cut off by his guilt-ridden refutation.

"No, Elsa! I won't do this to you! I've had two years to realize that I have no idea what love is, for all my ideals and notions of valor and grandeur and romance. I can't let you throw your life—and love—away on such an unworthy man as me." Hans wrenches his eyes away from her forgiving ones, despondently looking away from a compassionate Elsa as he takes several steps away.

"Do you love me?" Elsa timidly asks out of the clear blue. Her coloratura soprano strikes so many chords in the cool, secluded Water Garden as she touches Hans' arm gently with a pair of blue orbs pleading up at him to look at her and respond.

For several seconds, again only the sound of the trickling waterfall at their feet fills the still morning breeze that tickles at the stray hairs of Elsa's loosed braid until Hans cannot deny himself to turn around and face her frankness.

"… What…?" He stutters in disbelief at what his ears heard, the question astounding him as he is taken off his guard by her blunt, direct to the point unpretentiousness. Her words startled him enough to cause him to pause in mid-stride.

"Do you love me?" Elsa repeats, this time with more confidence to ask this chosen man this pertinent question than she ever thought she would or could.

"Elsa… You know I do – I more than love you… I adore you." Unable to refuse her entreaty any longer, Hans finally answers Elsa in earnest without holding back. The light behind his sad eyes breaks through to be truthful with her, despite his best attempt to contain emotions to spare her pain. Emotions that he was generally adept at concealing heretofore.

But his pale angel of beauty's precious crystal clear gaze begged him to come out of his perfectly honed shell and be completely human for once, with her.

"And that's why I must not –" But his responsible, obdurate male conscience still would not allow him to fully indulge in her bounteous charity.

" **I** love **you**." Elsa ignores his stubborn statement of self denial, unable to contain her own raging emotions without telling him of her heart full of true love for him against all the odds.

She softly gathers his hands in her normally reserved ones, tenderly unclenching his tight balled fists to fit into hers as she nuzzles her cool nose into his palms.

"…"

Shocked speechless at her open declaration of love, Prince Hans' shocked eyes stare in awestruck wonder at the rare beauty standing before him on this ocean swept Water Garden ledge.

Queen Elsa was agleam in the fresh morning sunlight with a magnificent forgiveness and lavish generosity of love up at him, glowing upon her every brilliant ice glimmering pore.

And her smile.

 _Ah, her smile…_

Hans' eyes make the inexorable mistake of engaging with Elsa's appealing eyes that reached out to him with so much more than mere friendship.

"'Love is patient, love is kind, not jealous, not boastful.'" Elsa of Arendelle begins to recite the Bible verse that had been most impressed upon her heart all this remarkable voyage that now brought her to Denmark's Southern Isles in a quest to find the man she loved beyond all understanding.

"'Love is not proud, it isn't insolent or selfish. Love is not easily angered.'" Elsa was grateful that Hans was finally facing her, fully entranced by the moving Scripture words of First Corinthians.

Her large expressive eyes prompt the man before her to continue the timeless, immortal verse.

"'Love keeps… no record… of past wrongs.'" Hans' glistening green eyes widen with enlightened comprehension as he realizes what she has been trying to tell him all along their journey together. He recites this rather fitting piece of the New Testament chapter that his sharp mind had long ago put to memory.

"'Love does not gloat over other people's sins, but takes delight in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.'" Elsa keeps on speaking the Inspiration with snowflake diamond tears in her eyes that had risen to spill out from the open floodgates of her very soul, full of a prayer of longing.

For this man she loved, it was a longing for him to be able to forgive himself. Elsa was heartily gratified to see traces of understanding, building into full blown realization, reflecting in Hans' widened and now equally glossy eyes, moistened with grateful unbidden tears, entwined with hers.

Elsa's tender and clear voice imparting the moving Biblical message filled with gentle wisdom had touched him in ways untold, to guide him to finally genuinely believe that the Lord promised to pardon a truly repentant soul—beyond all the doubts of this world.

" _Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a_ _new_ _creature: old_ _things_ _are passed away; behold,_ _all things become_ _new._ _"_ II Corinthians 5:17

Freed of the bonds of his guilt and self-blame, Prince Hans swiftly wraps his arms around her little waist, unable to restrain his emotions a minute longer. The earnest look on his handsome brow lets all his years of anguish go as Hans fiercely gathers Elsa closer to him.

His hand brushes at her tear stained cheek and runs through her platinum hair with such utter relief and evident love as the stunning mountain background seascape envelops the two tearful young lovers with all the beauty of the earth which God had put here long ago.

Fully submitting to this miraculous love granted both tormented souls at last, embraced in this eternal moment, Hans presses his wet lips to Elsa's forehead. Overcome with the shared sentiment, a heavy-lidded Ice Queen gazes up to her closed-eyed, demonstrative lover with her own sweet yearning splayed on her trembling lips.

As the ocean waves crest and fall, Elsa, with unashamed abandon, allows her once fearful-of-touch self to be pressed to Hans' chest warmly, a tender wind sweeping over the new couple with its sun soaked gentle hues.

"'Love never ends.'" As one, desperately in love, in soul and words and thoughts, Elsa and Hans meaningfully recite the closing line together. Hans pulls Elsa's pale hand over his heart, pondering his unparalleled good fortune to have secured the love of the girl who had surpassed his every fantasy with her unfailing faith and hope for him that made him a better man than he ever could have hoped to be before he met her.

Standing at the edge of the garden's cliff ledge, Elsa looks as adoringly up at Hans as he looked down at her until both their hearts burst with a joy each never knew possible.

The couple smile none too shyly at one another with the knowledge that they had finally found what they been unconsciously searching for in this amazing love that crossed all borderlines now that they were finally willing to accept one another in true honesty. No more secrets, nor lies, ever again between them.

Hearing church bells ring in the distance, an enthralled Hans pulls in to claim Elsa's enticing moist lips with the placid melody of true devotion and sublime understanding. He was elated with the knowledge that this feeling would last forever now that their love could no longer be denied, without a single thought beyond their irreproachable devotion for one another.

Prince Hans of the Southern Isles and Queen Elsa of Arendelle had found the courage to let go of all fear and embrace at last this supernatural love that conquered all doubts and regrets, to face life as one soul from now on, unconditionally.

As the pair kisses their first real romantic kiss passionately, an enchanted and euphoric Hans cannot contain himself from the dream that was phenomenally unfolding for him.

Aloft the waves of Elsa's inspired, unlimited faith, hope and love for him, against the breathtaking backdrop of the waterfall and mountainous seas beyond the Southern Isles, Prince Hans places his hands to slide down the cool of the Ice Queen's slender, shapely little waist, around her pale azure blue, crystal studded dress.

In the spirit of this eternal moment of transcendent love, Hans lifts the besotted woman in astonished ecstasy, effortlessly, until she is swept up in his arms. The thrilled Danish Prince holds the delighted Queen of Arendelle up over his head in unrestrained exhilaration, spinning her around and around, free as the breeze of the air, as if the pale blonde beauty was as light as a filmy feather.

With delirious smiles reflected upon both their grinning lips, Hans hold Elsa high up into the sky until he at last brings her giggling face closer to his, still carrying her in his arms, as tenderly as he would a precious little kitten.

"Marry me, Elsa…Let me hear you say that you'll be mine—now and for eternity.' Hans impatiently blurts out all at once, heart on his sleeve. In his verdant fern green eyes was a love and longing for only her, while his hand caresses her cheek and snakes his fingers into her platinum strands of hair wildly.

An equally hungered Elsa gazes back at him, her heart in full bloom and ready to flower. She grasps his arms even tighter, as if to give even more weight and truth to her next words to him.

"Yes, Hans, I **am** yours…I'll be yours, forever." With that, Elsa throws her arms around his neck, emboldened to be as bold as her heart dared at last. Whenever she was close to Prince Hans Westergaard, the reserved and shy young woman felt a feeling that only he gave her—that sense of complete and utter euphoria whenever she was in his arms, whenever she was near him, that Elsa could no longer deny.

Nor did she wish to hide from her emotions anymore. For once in her life, Elsa was overjoyed more than frightened to embrace this thrilling new world her Hans had opened for her.

' _With love, everything is possible.'_ Anna's sweet words of truthful wisdom echo in her sister's grateful head that was reeling with first love's excitement.

Hans, in return, cradles Elsa fiercely, possessively, burying his nose in her hair and neck. "I love you, my own darling Snowflake. You will have my heart until the end of time." He whispers huskily into her ear, his celestial nose nuzzling against the cool skin of the nape of her pale neck.

Elsa smiles, so completely at peace, so entirely happy and secure for the first time in her life.

"And I'm so in love with you, my own precious Hans." She murmurs, as she lets her lips gently, lightly trace his jawline. She nestles her head in the crook of his neck, whispering again and again: "I love you…I love you…"

Elsa surprises herself at how easily the words she once believed, in her 'cursed' life, she would never be able to utter to a man like a normal woman could, without fear.

"How God could be so good to me—to have given me you…" Hans breaks down, no longer able to speak, instead opting to nuzzle her, so overcome by his blessing in her.

"And you…to me." Elsa whispers back, closing her eyes, feeling the true impact of this moment between them.

Her Prince Hans-some was an extraordinary man who had proven by his gallantry and self-sacrifice that his 'Snowflake' meant the world to him and together they could overcome any obstacle from now on—as long as they were together.

Amazed at how dashing a figure the titian red haired Prince cut in the sleek Arendelle naval cloak swaying in the breezes, she was so encompassed in tracing to memory everything about him in this instant, that Elsa didn't even notice or feel when Hans had deftly removed that special snowflake engagement ring from her hand.

"I've waited for this moment my whole life—will you allow me…?" He lets the sentence dangle, expressive eyes willing her to understand him without further words.

Elsa smiles warmly up at him with a nod, still locked and held in his arms, as she gazes adoringly at her romantic hero. She watches him slip the ring smoothly, meaningfully, back on her left hand finger, as she gives an ecstatic gasp of living out a fabled dream.

Elsa somehow manages to break her gaze from his beautiful features to bring her eyes to the ring he was still fingering while now on her hand.

"It's so beautiful—this ring." She states breathlessly, still not believing this was all happening to her, as her eyes gleam in the refraction of the morning sunlight playing on every glittering angle of the brilliant blue topaz, sapphire and diamonds the resplendent ring amply possessed.

Just coming to grips that this was real himself, Hans smiles even wider - if that was even possible in this moment - and his eyes soften as he gently replies, still holding Elsa intimately close in his sinewy arms.

"I would say the hand is what's beautiful...Min **egen** elskede kærlighed." (My **own** darling love.)

He takes her pale icy hand adorned with the silver-platinum circlet of his love's promise in his and brings it to his lips, kissing her delicate fingers tenderly, causing Elsa to simply melt at the words and actions of this handsome man gazing so adoringly down at her.

Thoroughly uninhibited from her hidden fears of touching another human being, Elsa throws her arms around his neck tightly. In her contentment and joy the Ice Queen subconsciously creates thousands of gentle, tiny snowflakes to swirl around them alone, making a breathtaking tableau in the quiet, still water garden.

Entranced by her stunning blue eyes, with secret pride in knowing that each of her luxuriant gazes would be for him alone from here on in, Hans caresses Elsa's beautiful features in awestruck wonder.

In the beauty of his soulful eyes, Elsa could see the epitome of a virtuous love for her, so real and true and abiding and as strong as the sun building its warmth into their open and receptive souls, that dispels the lonely cold away forevermore.

A wondrous miracle, embellished by Elsa's magical gift blessed upon her from the Creator Above, makes this cherished moment a picturesque wonderland. Her ice crystals glisten all around this untouched garden that was now kissed by the unmatched morning sun with a hundred thousand different shining dancing snowflakes, not a single one the same.

But each snowflake was full of a love spreading upon the cascading waterfall scenery that told of this special young woman's hard fought fairytale, through faith and trust in a pure love that was mirrored in the yearning soul of an exceptional young man who had, through trials and tribulation, discovered his own heart in his love for her.

Both Elsa and Hans were finally ready to give their entire souls and hearts to one another in a love that traversed the past and the present barriers to take them into the glorious future's promise together, in this marvelous betrothal of Love.

* * *

Romance is in full bloom this pre-Valentine weekend here at 'Frozen Again', dear friends!

YES! This was the big one!

And Helsa made it! She's accepted him and he's finally accepted himself to be worthy to accept her! Queen Elsa and Prince Hans are officially engaged now, of their own admitted love and willingness for one another, to be MARRIED! After all the exciting angst and situation flung together flirtations and soulful repentant encounters for my Helsa couple, I am so pleased and excited it FINALLY happened!

This incredible moment only took us 2 books, 90 chapters and almost 800,000 words to get to this point! Yeah! They've finally confessed their hearts in love and God's forgiveness that cleanses all. The embraced to kiss with all the passion befitting their royal romance!

Did you like Hans' proposal to Elsa? My talented big sister/inspirational muse gave the idea for this lovely portion of their romantic scenario. After all, our Hans-some prince felt the need to propose and slip the ring on his lover's finger properly, rather than the unreal necessity way that Elsa claimed they were engaged at the trial. It was definitely more romantic to get truly engaged a second time, right? ^.~

This beautiful scene of a tearful Hans and Elsa realizing their love and promise as future husband and wife has already been illustrated by our own SetsunaKou on DeviantArt. It displays all the heartfelt drama and passionate romance of this chapter's climax. My artistically endowed sister has been my drive and inspiration these past two years to write this Frozen saga. And this was the moment she's been waiting patiently for, Helsa's true love come to full fruition in the form of a soulful proposal! I tried my best to apply all of my literary skills to work to satisfy my first, best and dearest friend, so her dreams of Hans and Elsa becoming a couple happened just as she wished it.

And I'm happy to say that after I gave this chapter for her to proof this afternoon, she emerged with tears of joy in her eyes claiming it was 'perfect' , 'loved it' and gave a happy big hug for me, her humble authoress. I couldn't ask for a better critique of this arc's close, than my beloved Setsuna's pleased, supportive smiles. ^_^ Big sisters are God's blessing, aren't they?

I hoped you also enjoyed this climax chapter of 'Frozen Again: The Greatest of These is Love'! Please review! ^_^ I would love to hear what you think about Helsa's big moment of love's revelation and future promise with her gorgeous Prince Hans!

Not that there won't be any bumps along their dazzling trip down the aisle…Icy mountains more like it may rise up in their path, with an overprotective King Agdar looming in the background of Hans & Elsa's betrothal…We'll see the starting point of the final book in this romantic trilogy perhaps, in the epilogue I've got slated to go up by the month's end.

So still please stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion wrap up in one more part full of romance and fun and excitement leading into the plot for our wonderful Frozen cast of favorite characters!

Thanks for traveling along with us along this wondrous journey of love and friendship and discovery!

God bless!

And Happy Valentine's Day! May your heart be blessed with all the love God gave to us in one another!

Love,

HarukaKou


	28. Chapter 28 - Blest Be the Tie that Binds

We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters.

 **"Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 28**

 **"Blest Be the Ties that Bind"**

Amidst her sheer joy in her betrothed Prince Hans' breathless kisses - _plentiful and thrilling as they may be -_ Elsa somehow still heard the Egeskov Chapel bells ring their final call to morning service prayers across Egeskov estate's lush grounds.

"Oh! We'll be late for church! Papa will be upset! Wait! I can't wear this to chapel!" At the very thought of her kind father's demanding eyes watching her come towards any holy shrine in her less than retiring and modest Ice Queen ensemble, a swallowing hard Elsa desperately moves in a tizzy to collect herself.

"What am I going to do?!" An overwrought Elsa takes a step back from Hans' passionate embrace to clasp her flustered hands together in a distraught pattern as she glances down at her skintight sparkling Ice Queen dress that did not quite fit into a solemn atmosphere.

Hans found his newly affianced lady absolutely endearing in the way the normally stunning and majestic Elsa goes instantly from peaceful to rattled, as she fusses at her shapely ensemble and mussed coif of hair with a panicked expression on her lip bitten face.

"Elsa, it's all right. I'm sure you can return to your lovely purple ensemble, if you focus your your gift to re-create the fabric's substance your ice previously deconstructed. Come on, give it a try, _Min kæreste_ (my dearest)." As mentor and loving partner, the concerned Danish Prince already takes charge of his brand-new fiancée's disturbed state of mind to relieve her with his astute assistance and encouraging smile.

"But… I've never done that before, Hans. I don't know if I can." The uncertain little girl in Queen Elsa often came out, especially in lieu of the startling amount of innate powers she still had not all the courage to fully explore.

But with intrepid and daring Hans Westergaard at her back, that was all about to change.

"I didn't just become engaged to a woman who so easily accepts the word 'can't' in her vocabulary. I'm going to marry a girl whose delicate hands can build ice bridges across a wave-tossed sea out of thin air, and create an amazing Palace built from her brilliant mind's imagination form on an empty mountainside, in the blink of a starry night." Hans announces the half encouragement, half dare with a proud smile to Elsa as he quietly re-engages her into his embrace, soothingly stroking her tousled locks with unlimited love on his every comely feature.

"And, _'I can do all things through…"_ With a confident question mark upon his raised brow handsome face glowing down at her, Hans lets the Biblical quote wisely hang in the air of this early morn to dispel the remainder of Elsa's uncertain fears.

"... ' _Christ, who strengthens me_.'" Touching hand to his red sideburns with utter love, Elsa finishes the heartening Philippians verse with a grateful smile to her new champion, who understood her so completely, so patiently.

Safe within his warm comforting cuddle, Elsa closes her eyes to have her ice magic grasp every last thread of fabric her powers had, as Hans had so cleverly put it, 'deconstructed' before. The Ice Queen untangles her icy verglas from where it had inundated and morphed the purple cloth fibers of her favorite velveteen gown earlier into her ice gown.

Elsa puts all of her mental verve to work to not only re-weave the textile material's intricate pattern, but also to apply it around the familiarity of her own slender form.

Hans lets Elsa's shimmering body go and turns around immediately to kindly avert his eyes from the diligent female's uninhibited magical clothing change. Though a complete gentleman, Prince Hans could not entirely detach his captivated eyes from surveying Elsa's enchanted, tempting form in all its revealing stages of mid-transformation.

The honorable prince clears his throat in shame at his momentary failing to be unswervingly principled in everything, and be worthy of this miraculous love particularly. But the still youthful man in him could not hamper a secret grin like a Cheshire cat on his face at the stimulating thought that this stunning creature of beauty would someday be his and his alone to drink in all of her purity and light.

"I did it! I actually did it! I melted the ice and reconstructed my regal dress!" Excited like a schoolgirl, Elsa spins around to show off her transformed garb with giggles of glee as she claps her hands together. With a grateful glance up to her benefactor, whose support and warmth of love made this achievable, she dashes over to the waterfall stream to catwalk glimpse her now purple frock adorning her tall and stately form again.

"Now we can go to church properly." Pleased as punch with herself at this thrilling new capability, Elsa stares at herself in the water's reflection until she realizes that her clothing may have been all ready, but her hair was still in its braid, and a particularly messy one at that, after all of Hans' delicious fondling.

"Oh, dear…my hair." Ever since she was a child Elsa was not particularly fond of dressing her own platinum blonde locks. As a teen, her long fingernails often got in the way of her tangled mass of tresses that, in her frustration, her ice would often make brittle.

Fortunately for Elsa, her songful mother was an expert at hair styling, and her ladies' maid Johanne, had picked up more than a few pointers on how to hum a classical tune which calmed, whilst styling the young Queen-to-be's hair when Elsa's patient mother had gone down with that fateful ship.

"May I do the honors, my Queen?" The red-faced Prince pipes up from behind Elsa where his gaze could not help but be entranced with her lovely visage as he looks over her shoulder, his embarrassment ebbing away in the blue of her beautiful eyes.

Elsa is struck speechless when Hans gently brushes his long fingers through her already messy blonde mane to undo the remainder of her tousled braid, coming to his love's aid yet again, even in this simple task. After all, Hans realized he was the main cause of its disarray, and it was only right for him to amend it.

" _'Do I love you because you're beautiful? Or are you beautiful because I love you?'_ " In his stellar tenor, Prince Hans begins to sing openly the adoration of his hidden heart for his lovely dream girl as he deftly rearranges her platinum locks in rhythm with his lightly lilting song.

 _"'Are you the sweet reflection of a lover's dream?_ '" Hans' soaring voice easily reaches for the high notes in a perfect tone color and tender cadence that thoroughly calms Elsa's jumbled soul to flow as freely and gently as the pristine waterfall setting the attractive pair was reflected in.

Like an expert hairstylist as he continues to serenade his love, Hans delicately twists and twirls and weaves Elsa's glistening hair into a lovely chignon bun that quite befitted a Royal Queen of her caliber.

 _"'Or are you really as beautiful as you seem?'_ " Hans simultaneously completes his song full of longing with a soft kiss to Elsa's spellbound forehead, completing her hairstyle with a loosed wisp of platinum upon it that he artistically found alluring.

"Is there anything you cannot do, my handsome Prince?" Opening her besotted eyes, Elsa examines his handiwork in the crystal clear waters. Her gorgeous man with his talented hands resting upon her shoulders, accomplished the ideal scene where he was standing so supportive and adoringly behind her. Elsa beams at him in their romantic tableau's reflection, never wishing for this precious moment to end.

"Alas, I have not yet mastered the art of holding time from marching forward, _min dejlige Snefnug_ (my lovely Snowflake). Though tempting as it may be to remain here with you angelically so radiant and exceedingly resplendent in my embrace, I fear we must depart." Hans impetuously takes his silver tongued opportunity to nuzzle Elsa's bare nape of her neck after he puts the final touches on her updo with tender, assiduous fingers.

His lips linger butterfly kisses up her long willing swan-like neck, across her tickled proud chin, to her blushing sweet cheeks as Elsa smiles into his viridescent eyes with her own azure adoration.

"Then shall we go, my darling Hans?" Elsa basks in the rays of the sun agleam in Hans' vibrant titian hair as she runs her hand through its red strands one last time in this, their unblemished setting of love's first acknowledgment.

"I live only for your command from this day forward, _Elskede_ (Beloved)." Hans reiterates his sentiments of love as the romantic, debonair man makes a sweeping bow to his lady love. Kneeling to her feet, Hans brushes his lips across her slender fingers, all the way around into the palm of her hand wearing his engagement ring that he meaningfully presses to his awestruck mouth.

With a pleased shy glance down at her man, Elsa turns around completely to face her royal suitor who was romantically planting kisses to her appendage. The once loner of a girl revels in this exciting new realm of having a lover to spoil and pamper her.

After several seconds more of his doting touches from his kneeling position, Prince Hans silently stands to escort Queen Elsa from their secret Water Garden, stroking her newly coiffed hair into flawless place with a look of pure admiration in his infatuated eyes.

The madly in love couple had been so engrossed in one another that they had lost all track of time.

 ** _DING-DONG! DING-DONGG!_**

But the dignified pair breaks their entrancement into a run when they hear the urgency of church bells toll once more. Laughing in exhilaration, Hans lifts a blushing Elsa tenderly onto Sitron's back, then leaps on behind her, cradling her gently between his arms, as she leans back into his 'embrace' while he motions the reins for the Fjord horse.

Sitron, who had been impatiently pawing the ground in wait, understands his master's desire and gallops at full steam towards the church, with a rolling–eyed chameleon smacking his multihued head in silent frustration at the lovestruck goo-goo lovers from where Pascal was perched atop Sitron's salt and pepper mane.

Loyal Sitron speeds like the wind, making it in no time across the gardens and the drawbridge with his pair of favorite riders intimately clinging to one another, awash in giggles of young love.

Hans and Elsa hang on tight for dear life on the fjord horse's lightning fast back. But Elsa had never felt more exhilarated to fly across the winds upon this noble steed, safe in the warm, steady embrace of her true love's arms.

The eager stallion delivers the newly affianced couple to prance directly in front of Egeskov Chapel's front entrance before its closed door.

But someone not so jubilant was awaiting their arrival there since it appeared an impatient King Agdar had been trolling in anxious wait for his elder daughter's late arrival to the church.

"Elsa! Where have you been?! Mass is about to begin, child." Spoken in a vexed whisper with pointed coldness in his icy gaze at Hans, a displeased King Agdar was not in the best of moods.

Agdar possessively takes Elsa by the arm to bring his daughter down from Sitron's saddle, ignoring Prince Hans' swift dismount to offer his lady his hand in aid.

"Forgive me, your Majesty. I will take all the blame for our tardiness. But perhaps, after church, may we speak of an important matter I must discuss with you –?" Steeling all his courage to face Elsa's father with their betrothal, Hans quite nobly and bravely begins to speak up right off the bat of their engagement. He did not desire for Elsa to mislead King Agdar in this subject, nor did he want for his Queen to face her father's wrath on her own.

No, Hans immediately wished to beg for Elsa's hand in the proper way a young man should request of his intended's parent in storybooks.

"I should have figured that you were to blame, young man." His ice brimming to the surface, the King of Arendelle tersely stares down the impertinent Danish Prince accusingly.

"Agdar, please come back inside! _I_ asked kind Prince Hans to fetch our Elsa from where she was collecting her thoughts in many of Egeskov's stunning sights that she showed interest in visiting before we left. The time must've gotten away from our girl in the beauty of the morning." But crafty Queen Idun's lovely lilting voice enters the scene just in the nick of time before her grimacing Agdar's slow burning mind could hypothesize what Hans was starting to build up to.

"Just as time is slipping away from us now, _min_ _kärlek_ (my darling). We must return inside to this special service for the King of Denmark before it begins without us, Agdar. We can all speak later." Idun begins to tug on her stone-cold husband's reticent arm. Then she plies her knowledge of Agdar's highly righteous, dutybound honor. "Out of respect for our neighboring country's monarch, now is _not_ the time to dillydally if we are to once again act in our roles as the royal rulers we are, my King."

Queen Idun's beckoning hand gives her orders in no uncertain terms to her brooding husband. Dutiful King Agdar silently de-ices and nods as his wife links her warm arm into his to lead her unmanageable man back into the chapel.

"May I ask you to escort my daughter into your kingdom's lovely chapel, Prince Hans?" But ever still a scheming mother as well, Queen Idun tosses the request over her shoulder to an encouraged Hans and elated Elsa.

Elsa smiles slyly at the way her sweet mother could wrap her father around her little finger still, and hoped she could pick up a few lessons regarding husbands and wives who still loved each other this madly after many years—for when she and Hans were married.

 _Married?! Husband and wife?! Hans and I..._ With a dreamy sigh, Elsa blushes wildly at her own vivid imagination concerning that weighty subject she dared to dabble into now.

"It would be my honor, your Majesty." Hans unquestioningly bows his head to the smiling brunette, former (or current?) Queen of Arendelle, as he quickly claims the Queen of his heart drawing her arms through his, like it was second nature.

Although that natural action makes King Agdar's regulated ire go up, his mouth beneath that debonair mustache frowns even deeper as he fights to control his hot temper and freezing capability. So the toe-tapping King who had been edgily darkening the Egeskov Chapel entranceway for several minutes now, gives Hans a stony glare behind his back.

 _My Snow Angel may be a powerful ice wielder, but she still is my daughter. She should not be traipsing around unchaperoned with that redhaired scoundrel, designing Dane, Idun!_

 _Besides, Elsa represents our nation as Queen. She must behave as such and not be the cause of any unfounded rumors of a quixotic alliance._

King Agdar, despite his stuffiness and jealousy to see Elsa in such intimate close proximity with this young man, was secretly proud that his once hesitant and frightened 'Snow Angel' was now so confident with self-possessed assurance that she could touch another being.

 _But did it have to be a **Dane**?_

No matter how hard he tried to instill in his daughter such resolution at a young age, it seemed that Elsa had become more competent learning control on her own.

 _But still, she is naïve to the ways of the world._

"That won't be necessary, Sir. As you have witnessed, with my two arms restored, I assure you I can easily escort both my wife and my daughter into the church, on my own. So your service will not be required –" As he abruptly turns on his heel with Idun on his one arm, King Agdar moves to tuck Elsa's free arm safely into his other, wrenching her away from a flustered Hans.

As if Queen Idun was going to let her pompous man ruin this tender moment for Elsa.

"Oh, Agdar! Drat, my ankle! It feels a bit weak. I don't know if I can make it up the steps…" When the trio start moving again, Queen Idun purposely stumbles on one of the stone steps leading up to the Chapel as she practically collapses forward against her husband's surprised arms.

So he had to let Elsa go immediately to come to his petite little wife's assistance.

"With all this walking and standing, _min älskare_ (my lover), I suppose my poor legs are still growing accustomed to standing after all those years spent huddled in that awful cave. But no one knows of that better than you, my brave darling." Queen Idun may have been feigning and over dramatizing her weak physical form as her fingers played tricks across her worried love's set jawline, but she was not falsifying her love and adoration for her King who lived those times in debilitated pain so nobly.

"Never mind that. I've got you now, my pet." Unsuspicious Agdar was still gullible to her womanly wiles, always putty in Idun's masterful hands, even after these two and a half decades of marriage. His reinvigorated body seamlessly lifts his Queen's faltering body up in his renewed strong arms.

"Come, Elsa." With a guarded glance aimed backwards, the King of Norway gives their child a secondary thought as he carries his precious wife across the drawbridge towards church in both arms.

Idun, behind her King's back, gives her abandoned daughter and bewildered Prince Hans a wink that causes the astounded pair to share a wry smile as they soberly follow the King and Queen of Norway making a dramatic entrance into Egeskov Chapel.

Idun was aware that her Ice King was still rather possessive in his claim to his little girls to be ready to secede power of that privilege to any young man just yet.

 _This_ _will_ _have to be presented in such a delicate way if Hans is to survive your emotional ice storms, my love…_ The petite Queen of Arendelle was already postulating the correct presentation of what something her quick mind and happy heart was overjoyed to see on Elsa's glittering hand, as yet un-relinquished after her rendezvous with her young man.

Elsa gracefully slips that left hand wearing the sparkling snowflake ring Idun had spotted still there around Hans' offered right arm, proudly displaying the silver platinum diamond snowflake ring that symbolized her engagement promise for him to see.

The diamonds catch the fiery rays of the morning sun that equally spreads wildfire across Hans Westergaard's stunning face. The thirteenth Danish Prince glows with puffed up pride upon all of his dashing features as, fitting like hand in glove, Elsa slips her slender arm into his with a warm squeeze. Hans leads Elsa to follow her parents into the quite full up chapel pews.

"You always did know how to get a man do your bidding, Idun." With a hubris raised brow, Prince Anders murmurs under his breath at the Norwegian Royal couple just re-entering the Danish holy edifice's front entrance, Idun now walking softly beside Agdar.

Intrigued Prince Anders had gone to investigate when Idun left the chapel to join her edgy husband outside. The Southern Isles Prince's snooping had been rewarded to witness Agdar now carry Idun into the church vestibule he had been keenly observing.

As Anders furtively returns to his seat, his own wife Frederika spins around immediately, curious to finally see this Swedish Princess who played such a starring pivotal role in her mate's early life before he settled for her. Frederika was interested to meet the woman who dared to refuse the advances and the urbane, well-connected, dominant hand of a Danish Royal Prince of Anders' caliber.

"That's the name of the game, my dear." In a conspiring whisper, Frederika nods her ringlets curl head in a coy gesture to her husband.

"It is simply called ' _politics'_ in your field of study, Anders. Heh, heh, hee. Hello, Idun." Princess Frederika nods her dark ringlet curled head to this new acquaintance who had one-upped her manipulative husband once upon a time.

The Polish Princess looks at Idun on the Norwegian King's attractive arm with a charming grin to a fellow royal sister who grasped the necessity to exert her womanly wiles over her own difficult-to-control man.

" _'A rose by any other name'_... It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Frederika." With her own flavor of literary innuendo to this intelligent woman, Idun can't stop herself from reveling in a conspiring chuckle shared with her distinguished ex-beau's wife, instantly recognized as a comrade.

That spontaneous frivolity of strangers causes Agdar and Anders to each raise a similarly highborn and dignified eyebrow at their most fascinating pair of wives, for once sharing a glance with one another that was not entirely full of contentious rivalry.

Agdar escorts his Idun to the front row pew seat that quick adapting Princess Emma had directed the unexpected visiting royal monarchs to. Agdar and Idun fill in the pew beside King Friedrich and Arianna, adjacent to King Herbert, Prince Kaleb, Princess Emma and Czar Nicholas of Russia on either side.

The dapper King of the North turns his loving warm gaze – now that he had safely seated his weak kneed mate beside him — to his two girls, immediately switching into imperturbable coolness and warning dagger looks.

King Agdar glares openly at Hans and Kristoff behind him where the youngest royal Dane had ushered Elsa into the second row pew beside where Anna had waved them to join her and her tall mountainman to meet in the middle.

"Why don't you sit beside your sister, Anna?" King Agdar instructs his daughters to switch seating arrangement that mellow Kristoff abides with a sigh and shrug to Anna beside him.

"Oh, me?" Anna's cute grin from ear to ear at her big sister as she does a precarious pirouette over Elsa's long legs in the second pew row is stunted when she plunks down in close proximity to one Hans Westergaard.

"Hi, Hans." Giving Hans a pursed lip in a dull voice, Anna turns her nose up at her former enemy's tentative smile. The peppery princess, spacing herself from being too close to Hans obviously, instead turns all her attention to clasp her little hand around Elsa's.

She feels at the significant item encircling her sister's finger with a wry smirk. Then the ginger girl gazes into the tall platinum blonde's eyes with a significant question silently asked.

The wordless understanding of which Elsa slowly nods and proudly smiles, covertly displaying her betrothal ring to Anna's hand wrapped around it, as Hans peeks around the sisters with a hopeful smile.

With a deep intake of breath at all this little piece of jewelry meant for the future, a scrunched face Anna immediately sticks out her own left paw to make girlish comparison. Anna proudly shows off her own less brilliant, but every bit as precious to her because Kristoff had worked double shifts as a lumberjack all last winter to pay for this special sunflower engagement/ wedding ring.

Her flung out wide right arm that graceful Elsa deftly ducks back from, suddenly smacks clumsily into an uninvolved Kristoff's surprised elbow.

Her clumsy action causes the poor uncomfortable man in the tight yellow guardsman uniform to drop the hymnal he was studying to fall beneath the front row pew where King Agdar's peripheral view was icily still glaring.

An unnerved Kristoff, half-afraid to bend down and show his ineptness to even hold a hymnal in a civilized setting before his severe father-in-law, smiles gratefully when attentive Hans offers the frazzled Ice Harvester another extra missal behind Elsa and Anna's intent-in-silent communication-backs.

Then both young men exchange a satisfied smile when the two sisters lean into one another with a sisterly loving hug of concord and harmony of faith in each other and their choices.

Although Anna comes out of the tender moment with an icy glare of her own towards Hans beside her, that, though unspoken, clearly stated: ' _Don't you_ _EVER_ _mess up for a second, Mister! 'Cause_ _I'll_ _be_ _watching_ _you.'_

Hans swallows hard when Anna's two fingers directly point from her eyes to his personage with a face and pinched mouth full of the brashly dared challenge.

With that wordlessly declared, the reunited Arendelle family then join the worship that gets underway with Mother Superior Sister Angelika quietly directing the deacons of the Egeskov parish to commence the church service now that all the King's sons were assembled.

The rest of the visiting dignitaries and ambassadors had already gathered in the Chapel upon awakening in Egeskov Castle this morning to the noisy ringing of church bells upon the sunny morn.

But as the doors were about to swing closed for the service to begin, one unnamed son of the King of Denmark and his bubbly Prussian Princess bust in, followed by a troop of ruffians to add their flavor to the tranquil holy scene.

"Who are these ruffians?'

'The likes of them aren't permitted in this holy shrine on the King's special birthday celebration!'

'The Prince must do something before they desecrate this reverent place!" Several soldiers of the high and mighty Egeskov guard begin to murmur their dissent to one another. They had gathered into the nearly packed church alongside the visiting Corona guard after they had left the tavern thugs to wash themselves in the river where the repugnant group had subjected Flynn Rider to a thorough scrubbing.

None of the guardsmen expected the 'foreigner lowlife' to join them into their nation's hallowed sanctuary. They warily watch the Snuggly Duckling boys stream into the rear of the chapel amid titters from each snobby footman and ladies' maid of the visiting delegation and the royal princes' servants, themselves appalled at this unheard of debacle.

Hearing Captain Jorgensen's men and the back row churchgoers in turmoil over these latest arrivals, hoity-toity Prince Kaleb feels it his duty to rise from his front row center seat next to his father to make the call needed to expel the dredges of society from their hallowed halls.

"Guards. Please show these gentlemen out –" Prince Kaleb had become accustomed to taking charge in this kingdom of late. So, upon sensing most of the royal attendees grow uncomfortable in their seats, it results in him standing up to give the order of expulsion.

"Hey, Kaleb. Ain't a church supposed to be a sanctuary open to even the outcasts of this world? They're not hurting anything here. Besides, these boys are with me." Surprising the thugs for vouching for them, a still damp – _I must admit I'm particularly stunning when I'm just fresh from a bath-_ cheeky Eugene had the audacity to pause in his recently washed, cocksure stride up to the second row behind Rapunzel's parents to crassly interrupt his older brother's eviction notice.

A mortified Queen Arianna audibly groans at her son-in-law's rudeness in this foreign land's holy establishment, her sympathetic King waving a hand to give her some air, lest she pass out from the humiliation.

The choir music stops entirely in Egeskov Chapel where a pin drop could be now heard fall as everyone in the shocked chapel looks from Flynn to Kaleb and the ruffians caught in between the chisel-jawed men as several seconds of tense silence pass.

"Yes, young man, you are correct. _All_ of God's children are free to worship beside us in this Lord's house, no matter what the occasion. Do come in and find seats where you can, Gentleman… We, of Egeskov, humbly welcome you." King Herbert breaks the confrontational moment to place a hand on his eldest boy's shoulder, signaling to Captain Jorgensen and his guards gathering to arrest Kaleb's order.

Herbert's old eyes smile to remember a brash young woman with the same amber orbs and defiant, bold words for the least among us, as Eugene Fitzherbert just displayed.

The King of Denmark awards the Prussian thief a respectful nod that causes a cocky smirk to crawl up the side of Flynn Rider's crooked, smug mouth. A self-satisfied look that his wife Rapunzel found both adorable and enticing as she leans a hand proudly to his chest in that fancy suit he was so stylishly sporting.

Many of the snobbish envoys and princes and dignitaries who had turned up aghast noses at this motley Snuggly Duckling gang attending the church service are astonished as an inspired King Herbert realized that these new ragtag visitors were every bit as welcome in God's House of worship as any of they.

Perhaps even more welcome so in some honest ways, even if their colorful appearances quite startled the liturgical proceedings.

With his hand over his heart, Herbert feels inside his naval jacket pocket where a pair of life-altering letters held a spot directly over his heart. The opening hymn followed by the opening prayer of 'Our Father' begins to be recited and the service once again proceeds.

Then every eye in the solemn chapel turns to the King, uncommonly in attendance, to formally speak salutations before the first blessing.

"Indeed, I do wish to welcome all to my kingdom on this glorious morning of awakening. I do not speak this lightly, merely because this day is memorializing the seventieth year of my modest, insignificant life. But because of the grace that God who has given me one last chance to make amends for a misspent life full of derisive apathy and cruel contempt for my fellow man before death came to claim me. So before all of you, and more importantly, before the Holy Creator, I beg pardon heartily for my past, as we join the worship together, looking towards the future." King Herbert stands a bit wobbly before the Folkkirken ( _The People's Church_ ) of the Lutheran Church of Denmark with unaccustomed humility.

His blue eyes were directly upon a blushing Elsa and thusly Hans, just behind him, whom he gives an approving wink for bringing such a lovely angel into his life by achieving her love.

Herbert bows his head to the gray-haired Lutheran vicar and waves a hand for the choir in the apse above to continue their halted hymn of praise.

The uppity sons of the King exchange wary glances to one another as the Snuggly Duckling gang, from little Shorty all the way up to big Vladimir all troop in, single file, intimidating many a scooted over diplomat and refined lady to fit in the crowded pews with salutes to Eugene beside their dear Princess Rapunzel in the second row.

Hookhand stands by the door he was holding open, ready with his metal hook's back end to whack each thug who forgot to remove his hat or helmet as they enter the sanctified establishment.

With an instant headache, Queen Arianna buries her appalled face in her dismayed hands as her representative Corona subjects fill the front and rear pews and any space found with their unrefined presences. Several the unsavory lot make rather unpleasant noises as they try to squeeze their massive bodies into the tight pews, as some nearly get into a brawl vying over who got the preferable window seat.

Bruiser and Killer spot in their view their new-old pal Hans, where he was gentlemanly seated beside his lovely pale maiden. The dapper prince deliberately displays his hymnal book from the pew's hymnal rack for each of from to mimic, and the partners nudge one thug to another until the Snuggly Duckling boys catch right on and follow suit.

Each of their perhaps not so melodious, but definitely sincere, voices raise along with the choir and the rest of the somewhat alarmed congregation as Prince Hans' soaring tenor inspires the lead in duet with Queen Elsa's coloratura, perfectly woven voices together as one.

Princess Anna, despite herself, could not deny her own soprano's addition to Hans and Elsa's lovely twosome from where she stood between them. And their musical parents and cousins and even motivated aunt and uncle soon sing along to the soulful tune.

 _"From every stormy wind that blows,_ _  
 _From every swelling tide of woes,_  
 _There is a calm, a sure retreat:_  
 _'Tis found beneath the mercy seat.__

 _There is a place where Jesus sheds_ _  
 _The oil of gladness on our heads;_  
 _A place than all besides more sweet:_  
 _It is the blood-bought mercy seat. "__

In mystified wonder at the glorious music ringing down from the choir apse and harmonious vocalists beside him, King Herbert gazes back to the beautiful couple of Hans and Elsa, such happiness inscribed on both their faces beaming at one another across the pew.

King Herbert's eyes glaze over to the Arendelle and Corona royal families at his side, full of a great faith and gratitude that created such a moving melody of praise.

Soon, the somber old King of Denmark clears his raspy throat and follows his youngest lad and soon-to-be-in-laws' lead in song he had not attempted in years.

With a nod across the aisle, Herbert urges on the rest of the detached Southern Isles Princes, normally stoic and solemn in chapel, to raise their voices in worship as well.

Prompted by their wives to share their missals attentively in hand, the dozen more sons of this land do just that.

 _"There is a scene where spirits blend,_ _  
 _Where friend holds fellowship with friend;_  
 _Though sundered far, by faith they meet_  
 _Around one common mercy seat.__

 _There, there, on eagles' wings we soar,_ _  
 _And time and sense seem all no more;_  
 _Where Heav'n comes down, our souls to greet,_  
 _And glory crowns the mercy seat."__

The thugs from the Snuggly Duckling Tavern, though some toothless, some armless, most shameless – were all certainly whole in the mercy seat of God. Sweet Princess Rapunzel had shown and shared with them the Lord's shepherding care these past seven years since they had blessedly met.

All throughout, this group of rowdy, oft-unruly men showed her their better souls and could feel the hymn's message reverberate in them, too.

Another of the pretty Prussian Princess' converts was her rough-and-tumble handmaiden, Lady Cassandra. With a smirk, unlikely parishioner Cassandra may have had to stick her open hymnal book right below her father Captain Schmidt's moustache, but the well-built Corona guardsman did not disappoint her with his harmonious bass voice delivery of the religious song she joins along with.

Even a grateful Aged P and his daughters had entered the Chapel to add their scratchy, loud voices raised in holy song with the other Snuggly Duckling members. Though some were discordant to the rest of the congregation, King Herbert felt it was fitting for the lowest of low, least among them to attend this special church service alongside the highest of royal representatives and their ilk in his honor.

Even a grateful Aged P and his daughters had entered the Chapel to add their scratchy, loud voices raised in holy song with the other Snuggly Duckling members. Though some were discordant to the rest of the congregation, King Herbert felt it was fitting for the lowest of low, least among them to attend this special church service alongside the highest of royal representatives and their ilk in his honor.

 _I have been shown by this younger generation that a heart needs no class, nor society, nor position, to be just as worthy of love._

Herbert's eyes glaze over his illegitimate son Eugene and his adorable, wide-eyed princess fair as he recalls his noble-hearted Louise's wish for these parish doors of their Royal Den Danske Kirke (Royal Church of Denmark) to be open.

Open for _all_ the Southern Isles citizens, not only the highborn clique. But once upon a time, the coldhearted King in his uppity clutching years as a power-avaricious snob had ignored his magnanimous queen yet another request, decades ago, that he regretted terribly now.

" _'Even when the public and the Pharisees mocked Him, did not the Lord himself have supper with thieves and tax collectors_?'" Herbert still heard his vibrant redheaded beauty Louise's scriptural words echo though his good and evil ice mirror cleaved heart's remorseful head.

 _Well, the doors are open now, Louise. Twenty-seven years too late for you to enjoy, but I feel you are watching this kingdom from His Kingdom above, sun of my soul…_

King Herbert allows the sun streaming through the chapel's stained-glass window to beam up on his face that was for so long weary and old, but surely still dashing.

The vicar's reading from Psalm 84:11 could be no more apropos to the King's train of thought as all stand for the Word.

" _'For the Lord God is our sunshield. The Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will be withheld from them that walk uprightly."_ As the priest stands up to the altar, Queen Idun gives her husband's hand a warm squeeze as she innately senses icy ire still up towards the pair of young men behind his back standing like sentinels to flank each of his precious daughters. Queen Idun knew it was taking all the restraint in Agdar to not at least turn around and icily glare at Kristoff and Hans during the service. But her warm smile in healing song and stalwartly embraced arm would see him through.

The local priest, Father Jerome, whom Mother Superior Sister Angelika had requested to preach here for the King's celebratory day, nods to the King and each of his royal sons as the man of the cloth joins the procession into the Egeskov Chapel. He takes the pulpit as the special weekday service mass commences its ceremony.

Father Jerome soon begins his reading from the New Testament that Mother Superior had advised may touch some bitter cold heart strings at last this birthday. Not only that of the septuagenarian monarch, but also the visiting princes belonging to this royal house who needed godly wisdom now more than ever, as perfectly personified in Jesus' parable of the lost sheep.

"A reading from the Gospel of Luke." The elderly vicar begins to speak, looking over the royal chapel that was more filled now than in many a year, to the good man's delight.

"'Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And He spake this parable unto them, saying, 'What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.'" The clergyman says, demonstratively holding an imaginary lamb over his back.

"'So when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, 'Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.' I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.' The Word of the Lord." The priest bows his grey head to the Holy Bible on the pulpit.

"This parable of our Lord proves once again, that it is the Good Shepherd who bridges the chasm between one lost soul's true redemption and the sinful nature of man that turned his back on God's glory. It is, as the hymn stated earlier, only Jesus the Lord who loved us enough, even in our sin, to come down to carry us upon His shoulders. Just as the shepherd who left all others aside to seek out that one lost little lamb. And he, Christ-like, rejoiced over that one single soul returned to the fold. Jesus celebrated that lost little lamb more than the other ninety-nine sheep who did not stray, not because He loved **them** any _less_ , but because the lost sheep with the broken heart needed His compassion _**most**_." Here, Father Jerome, who had known of the family's tribulations for decades from Sister Angelika, and had prayed over them in many devotions.

The holy man pauses to gaze his sagacious eyes over each of the princely sons in the front row pews. From Kaleb, to Anders, to Lars, to Ivers, to Mattias, to Didrik, to Jürgen, to Peiter, to Berte, to Franz, to Rune, to Ruddi and finally upon Hans until his attention at last encompasses King Herbert.

"We, each, in times of our lives, are that singled out, unloved pariah, as the lost sheep represents, who had gone astray in our wickedness, lost hope after being rejected unjustly, or have felt abandoned in our fears. But the Good News is that the Lord will seek us out and carry us with wings upon his mighty back straight to God's mercy, even if we attempted to flee it in our pasts, if we just let Him in and accept His love. Because we each are precious to Him, He desires our redemption so He can freely take us back into the bosom of the flock again. God's forgiving love for us all is that incredible and we must each strive in our hearts to emulate our Lord's faultless, remissive mercy and compassion as best we can to one another. We must learn to forgive."

As the wise old vicar concludes his sermon, a few of the females in the audience were dabbing not a dry eye with their handkerchiefs. Even several of the men were nodding at the priest's parable of the lost sheep and his follow-up sermon that was quite befitting to the great work of man's redemption in Christ's earnestness in bringing sinners home by Divine providence.

The Lord's pertinent parabolic words ring through King Herbert's carefully listening heart that had been cleared of that mirror's mind-altering. His newly opened eyes turn to the little lost sheep whom he, as father, had not only failed, when Hans had gone astray, but his own brothers had callously turned Hans out into the wilderness, without a lifeline.

But one look at his youngest boy's verdant green eyes that resembled his mother's showed the King that Hans' Heavenly Father above had not abandoned him in his darkest hours.

In his equally penitent heart, King Herbert could see God's mysterious blessing in Hans' forsaken life in the lovely, lithe form of the pure beauty at his son's side. Through her belief in him, Hans' earthly father could sense a new self-assurance in him, that Elsa of Arendelle gave to his once thought lost, unwanted and outcast child.

Hans could now hold his head up high by the power of His forgiving love, as the keen young man shares his father's reception of the parable's sentiment of a forgotten sinner brought home, wrapped in the forbearing arms of Grace.

A grateful understanding causes Hans' trembling eyes to hold back the same tears reflected in his father's.

Sensing this wonderful happenstance for her man, emotional tears also fill Elsa's icy blue eyes with joy. The not-oft emotional Ice Queen feels Prince Hans' hand - _etiquette and proper decorum be damned_ \- subconsciously reach out to slip behind Anna's stiffened back _(Watch it, fella!_ ) into that of his young queen with the eyes full of empathy for him in the second row pew.

Elsa squeezes Hans' gloved hand oh-so-gently as she oversees with pride how her Hans was receiving not only his coldhearted patriarch's heartfelt pardon, but many slowly welcoming nods from his numerous brothers that surrounded King Herbert willing to join in.

King Herbert's sincere invitation of forgiveness prompts Hans to turn to see his brothers' coaxed, but none forced nods. All thirteen brethren, now in maturity, share a familial smile of acceptance after a quarter century of derision and disdain, applied to brotherly fellowship at long last.

 _It's what brothers do…_

"So that's where that ninety-nine flock of sheep you were proclaiming way back when comes in, Lillebror. Damn! Now it all makes sense! That's good stuff, Padre! I'm gonna start reading that Good Book chock-full of deeper wisdom. Who knows, maybe it'll influence even a black sheep like me into being a good dad." Eugene comments out loud from where he was seated at the window side end of the second row, quite forgetting his place as he recalls Hans' recitation of part of this eye-opening Scripture.

Many of the distinguished Westergaard brothers snicker, some chuckle under their breaths, whilst even the stuffiest of them stifle smiles at this irreverent loudmouth younger 'brother' whom they would never recognize, but always could secretly claim as the aforementioned 'black sheep' of their own 'flock'.

Eugene crudely connected the dots of the moving parable now that he had heard the entire passage, fully understanding his reference now as a lip-biting Rapunzel pinches his arm at her mother Arianna's instructive eyed request.

 _You can dress a man up, but you can't take him out…_

"What'd I say?" Flynn Rider was looking quite dashing in a borrowed, fancy-pants, black waistcoat and tailored jacket, as he rubs his pinched arm with a pouty mouth, all eyes in the church turned to stare at the freshly – _and thoroughly_ – washed and scrubbed, unheralded 'Prince' of two realms.

"Sideburns is the one who made the comparison to livestock, Blondie, not me! Besides, I thought you had a soft spot for your little _Lambykins_ …" The former thief was giving Elsa's blushing boy all the blame as scapegoat. But his excuse is soon encored by an approving grin and quote mimicked tease as Eugene leans back to the church aisle beside Princess Rapunzel and her ashamed parents King Friedrich and Queen Arianna.

Like father, like son, blinking Hans and King Herbert share a significant look across the years, followed by a chuckle across their hearts in Elsa's adoring eyes, as the rest of the silently aghast congregation are calmed by the King of Denmark's forgiveness of Flynn's rude disturbance.

"Indeed, we should all hope to aspire to be as paternally admirable as the instructive text prescribes, my boy." With a pardoning look to a pacified Eugene, Herbert nods for the interrupted service to continue on.

"Now, dear friends, We have a special treat for you all this fine morning. The birthday boy himself, our beloved sovereign, King Herbert, has requested a chance of discourse from the Gospel of Matthew." Sister Angelika's motherly smile extends over the Westergaard clan as the religious leader gestures for calm Kaleb, Herbert's eldest son, and a shocked Hans, the King's youngest, to escort their father up to the front and center pulpit on either side of him.

"Thank you, Kaleb, Hans. My children." With a pat to each of their hands, King Herbert gives a genuine smile to his eldest, then his youngest, sons on either arm propping the old bearded man to steady him up the altar steps to the preaching pulpit.

Prince Kaleb nods deferentially as he obediently deposits his aging father and turns back to his front row pew seat. But Prince Hans cannot but puff up with pride, a hand to his astonished chest as he had finally garnered his father's much sought-after acknowledgment expressed in the simple utterance of his name and claim of being his child in fondness, rather than disparagement.

On the hazy cloud of delirium, his slim body moves in automatic as Hans returns to his seat, and Anna succumbs to the childish urge to quick stick out her tongue at his 'dreamy eye color'. Her psychically connected Kristoff on the other side of Elsa bursts into a coughed laughing fit at his petulant wife's mental ridicules of the red-headed twit.

An embarrassed Hans quickly rubs off the smile etched on his priceless face to be more appropriately stoic again, but his too-pleased-to-stay-taciturn-for-long eyes were still glimmering, if only for his darling Elsa.

For a brief moment Hans wished to share the joy of his glowing eyes with her alone, for Elsa was the other half of his heart where Hans always felt a vacant hole before. But now it was so full.

Unaware of all this young love drama as he stands before the church congregation, King Herbert clears his throat and stands as erect as he could, holding on to the sturdy gold trimmed oak pulpit for support before he begins to speak.

"A reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew, also known as the 'Sermon on the Mount' of our Lord Jesus Christ." King Herbert nods respectfully with closed eyes to the carving of the Savior on the opposite on the wall of Egeskov Chapel. His steely blue eyes then open to envelope his sons amid the congregation.

"The sermon of which, I clearly recall now, was your dear mother's favorite Bible passage, my boys." King Herbert emotionally pauses to meet Elsa's glittering orbs with atonement reflected in his as he rests his gaze to his father's, and his father's before his, ancestral Bible.

"'Now when Jesus saw the multitudes He went up to the mountains to sit. His disciples went to Him and He opened His mouth and taught them saying:'" Herbert looks up from the Good Book on the podium he was leaning heavily upon to scan over each of his sons, until he stops upon his firstborn.

Crown Prince Kaleb's wearied, worry laden face appeared far too tired and worn to be only due to the lack of sleep this early eventful morning.

"'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." The deep-throated King pronounces the first of Christ's Beatitudes. Here the King stresses the significance of serving in a kingdom that was godly to his most appropriately inheriting son. King Herbert applies the meaningful terms to his often dispirited, eldest child who was so full of cares of the heavy crown to be passed to him some day soon, that he lacked all enjoyment in life.

When the stiff man finally realized that his father's gaze was directly upon him and no one else, an enlightened Prince Kaleb sits up straight. He looks his father directly in the eye for the first time in a long time, understanding the intention to teach the younger ruler-to-be a lesson he himself was long in coming around to.

Ever present, wise Princess Emma, at her husband's side, as always, just now realized how very alike the darkly bearded smile was of both father and first son that either rarely displayed before.

After the long lasting gaze spoke volumes of wisdom to Prince Kaleb, King Herbert continues in his reading.

"'Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall see God.'" King Herbert moves his attention to the opposite aisle of pews, where his imperious second eldest son, Prince Anders was seated at the head of. It didn't take much for King Herbert to take away a sense that this ambitious second-in-line son had a cunning eye on his sadly unattainable throne still after all these years.

That dark aspiration had made competitive Prince Anders a bitter man. This politically-driven son's piercing blue eyes were always difficult to make eye contact with, even moreso after having been recently chagrined by his old rival's appearance.

For cool Prince Anders was not so well to concede any kindness, lest he lose authority. That is, until his engaging wife Princess Frederika links her sly arm in her own chilly husband's, urging him to return his father's smile with a contagious one of her own up at him.

And finally, Prince Anders relents to her bewitching wiles, with a stolen glance at Agdar, proud to show off his own bride.

Satisfied with the good woman who, though not Anders' first choice, had always stood beside her cunning man to influence him to make the right choices, the King of Denmark carries on his reading.

As his glance searches out for his third child, Prince Lars had chosen that bungling moment to drop and entangle his spectacles into his wife Princess Isabelle's bouncing blonde ringlets of yellow hair that he had gotten too close to while peering out the stained-glass window in scientific curiosity of the monstrous Snow Beast outside playing with the children.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." With a chuckle, Herbert purposefully moves verse seven of the Lord's Beatitudes up to apply to this one son he recalled as showing his little brother Hans some morsel of brotherly mercy many years ago. Herbert also remembered condemning brainy Lars as being weak and far too intellectual to be worthy of the Westergaard name, for spoiling the unwanted child.

Although now, his father finally understood that he himself was the 'weak-minded' one and Lars perhaps the strongest of them all in his queer ways. The King and the scholarly man, just popping his glasses back onto his confounded face, exchange a cognizant glance and goofy smile in silent tranquility.

"'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'" Now, whether or not King Herbert was ready to accept the recognition that, in his primogeniture, male right of succession kingdom, his fourth in line son, the once haughty Prince Ivers, was the only child of his, thus far, to produce a male 'heir' to the Westergaard line.

Although the lovely little boy Lukas would normally never succeed to the throne due to his unsuitable mother, King Herbert now wondered. Perhaps, Ivers' quiet and meek French filly Princess Marguerite's willing – _no, loving_ – adoption of the small child into their family as a treasured godson, heralded a bold new future full of surprises that said anything under the sun could change.

King Herbert glances at the crystal clear eyes of the young Queen of Norway who had altered his entire old-age, stuffy world around for the better with a new realization on life.

Maybe even this strict kingdom would see Kaleb and Emma's oldest _girl_ inherit the crown someday. _Why not? If Queen Elsa is any example of how fine a ruler a woman can be..._

Herbert's once male dominant society eyes scan over the sea of girls and young ladies who were his grandchildren just as much as any boy would be.

Either way, the King was impressed at his fourth son's courage to directly admit his past wrongs to him about the boy and take full responsibility, as he himself had shirked for far too many decades with Agnès and Eugene. Herbert and Prince Ivers share a forthright blue eyed nod. Marguerite's constant hand was linked in his and Lukas' between them.

"'Blessed are those who do hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be fulfilled.'" The Danish King turns his regard now to his fifth son, patronizing Prince Mattias.

Almost portly Prince Mattias may have been self-indulgent for both food and money and power over the years, but his sprightly and charming Belgian wife, Princess Elisabeth's vibrance had kept the business-minded man from allowing that hunger to ever fully consume him.

For that, King Herbert was grateful to the lovely woman, who smiles right back at him with a nod, openly. The old man could see how she had curbed Mattias from becoming an old miser all these years with her sunny disposition.

"Blessed are the pure in heart. For they shall see God." Now, King Herbert may not have given this sixth son any training whatsoever when it came to the proper treatment of the fairer sex, his own affairs of the heart far too complex to be of any example, but the ruler of the Southern Isles could now so clearly observe the empty void Prince Didrik, filled with conquest after conquest of a less warlike sport that had never fulfilled his heart, yearned for the purity of love still.

That contentious Spanish beauty possessively clinging to his arm may have to fight for his attentions, but his gallant heroism on behalf of his youngest brother made a positive impact enough for her to try, it seemed. Didrik's singular, bold stance on Hans' behalf left its mark on King Herbert as well. As he arrived in the confrontation in the throne room earlier he witnessed his believed shallowest offspring rise above and deserve the word 'pure'. Within his blemished son's heart in defense of his little brother's life against all odds, Didrik had proven he was somewhere, deep down, a good man.

"Touché, Father." Beneath his twirled moustache, Prince Didrik, in his ingratiating way, mouths with an affected simper back to his parent in amusement of the antithetical context. The devastatingly handsome younger man's entertained look draws a similar smirk across his aging rogue of a father's still dashing face as the pair share a raised, dapper eyebrow glance.

 _Moving on…_

"'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Herbert looks towards first his lifelong Søværnet officer, naval son Prince Jürgen and then his sturdy, steady as a rock Prince Peiter, granting them a hail-fellow-well-met wave of his royal naval hand.

Both men in the lesser half of his thirteen – _no, fourteen_ – sons felt little hope of ever ascending to the crown. So, under Adelaide and Lujza's sure steering of their mid-classed ships, they were more or less content with their mundane lives. Both strategic Jürgen and blustery Peiter often played the role of peacemakers for their more disruptive brethren when the brotherly conflicts became hot and fierce.

Peiter and Jürgen dually salute and wave back to their Admiral father who was giving them attention for the first time in their practically ignored, inconsequential lives.

"'Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'" The Danish monarch then directs his attention to his ninth and tenth sons, bumptious Berte and fractious Franz.

These two, as hunting partners and competitor/ friends in a bit of Yin and Yang complimentary/ polar opposite personalities, could not be more disparate if they tried.

As a lawyer, well-coiffed Berte certainly must have had much firsthand acquaintance with unjust persecution. Rugged Franz, as a world traveler in all parts of the uncivilized globe definitely had witnessed many horrors.

But neither man had taken persecution or oppression seriously until the tyranny and abuse of the women closest to them, here at home, had just been made lucidly evident as Hermine and Amalia quietly attend chapel beside their impressed husbands with new dignity.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you–" The kingly patriarch vacillates his notice between a pleased as punch with himself Prince Rune with the bejeweled extravagant Russian Crown Princess under his ruddy belt; and his not so suave, nor comely twin Prince Ruddi who was literally drooling on his wide-eyed young flower, Maria, in her pretty yellow gown.

Both boys, spoiled rotten as almost the babies of the group of young men, had acted the part of petulant children for far too long to ever gain many friends in their circle.

The Russian Czar standing in the midst of his girls would surely make these two spoiled twin brats tow the line and act like mature adults pretty soon.

 _Or else be turned to borscht!_

"– And persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." With a mirrored glint in his mischievous eyes in passing at a quirked brow Eugene, King Herbert finally lets his gaze alight upon his youngest child.

Hans dares not tear away from his father's intent eyes. But the deepened reddening of his already reddish features made Anna, seated beside him, not even try to stifle her giggles at his abnormal discomposure.

That bad behavior prompts Elsa to spread, with one stealthy hand, a cool blast breath of arctic wind to her ill mannered little sister's seat in a warning glance. Conversely, Elsa in secret grasps Hans' hand tight with all the warmth she could muster in her unbalanced digits behind Anna's back.

"Ooh! Cold cold cold cold!" Anna's squeals are stifled by an intuitive Kristoff smooshing her impish mouth with his yellow uniform leather glove extended behind Elsa's back, so as not to alarm her already edgy, tense father with those terrifying dagger ice eyes.

With a constant arm around her King, Queen Idun directs his yearning to stray gaze trained on the speaker at the podium at all times, respectably.

"'Rejoice, and be exceeding glad. For great is your reward in Heaven.'" Giving Hans a rare smile, the penitent father then gazes meaningfully to each of his sons' expectant faces that were lifted up to him with the new hope he had never been father enough to instill in them before.

"This, the Word of the Lord." With his head bowed, the Southern Isles King brings the Holy Book to his lips and kisses the cover as he closes shut the Bible that belonged to his ancestral family.

King Herbert wraps up his prayerful Bible passage reading of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount full of Proverb-like blessings with his wrinkled old hand placed over the letters pressed against his heart. His eyes raise to the depiction of an illuminated mother Mary in the stained-glass window as he sends a prayer upwards for each of the sons he had ignored, stifled, or condemned in some way for far too long in their mother's absence.

Hans surprises everyone, himself included, by being the first among his stunned brothers to make a bold move towards his aged parent. His own soul stirred with mercy, the red-headed prince kindly ascends the altar steps to assist the older man's departure from the stabilizing podium he was leaning upon.

A pleased Herbert halts any further aid from his other offspring with a mere wave that said he was in good hands.

"You have found it in your heart to forgive an unworthy old curmudgeon such as I for all those wasted years, Hans?" King Herbert murmurs in Hans' ear as the redheaded Prince places a steadying wiry arm around his weak-kneed father to slowly lead him down the altar steps.

"It is in forgiving that we are forgiven, Father. I truly believe it is better late than never for second chances in His patient eternity." Hans sincerely whispers back in simply stated ecumenical terms and heartfelt expression spoken through his eyes to the man who gave him life, and for the first time now, kindness.

"Then, if you permit me this counsel I hardly deserve to issue as a parent, you must give someone else that same opportunity, son." King Herbert glances up to where that delicate beauty of an Ice Queen was intently watching his youngest child's every move and inflection with a languid smitten adoration in her exotic eyes that only meant one thing.

"I have always been your son, and you will always be my father." Hans says low in his parent's ear with a depth beyond scope that granted the King due respect as a father though undeserved.

"How is it you are so much wiser in your young years to my old waning ones to have so early learned those timeless truths?" Leaning to Hans as they traverse the chapel front altar, Herbert responds, thoughtfully considering the boy's sage words. "Perhaps that is why you have been so blessed." King Herbert's eye glances at Elsa approvingly as they approach her pew row.

"A uniquely devoted creature such as that must be pampered and treasured, and never forsaken, Hans. Above all, her delicate blossom must be loved by her heart's desire. Her husband must live up to be every bit laudable of that, lest she wither. As I foolishly let the flower of your dear mother slip away…" The King nostalgically offers his own lifetime of regretful words of advice.

For even he, a blind of heart old man, could clearly see Queen Elsa of Arendelle's ardent sentiment for this most unlikely boy, making Hans and Elsa's attachment all the more poignant and sweet.

In Hans' struck speechless, shy gaze over to his father, Herbert glimpses the reflection of his beautiful Louise's stunning green eyes yearning for love in Hans more than any of his other children.

"Promise me you won't ever let that happen to our tenderhearted 'Elsie.' You fight for her. You live for her. You love her forever. Don't ever let her go." King Herbert urgently whispers up into Hans' pulled down ear as the King wishes for his final child to experience and seize such incomparable happiness with both hands and not copy his own past mistakes of letting time and tide pass him by.

For once, Herbert speaks this without a solitary thought to the beneficial paired union between this beauteous Ice Queen's nation and his in his conquering, plotting for world domination existence to grasp more power.

Herbert now only prayed for Hans to marry Elsa for love, not out of any ulterior power grab, nation-building, designing motives whatsoever.

Even if this remarkable young woman was still just 'Elsie the maid', King Herbert was sure he would be every bit as proud for his son to marry her, too.

"On my honor." Prince Hans repeats his chivalrous phrase with an artless smile that told Herbert he intended to love his Elsa with every bit of that advice, and then some.

His parent's unforeseen attachment and fondness for Elsa in his own right made Hans even further relieved that he and Elsa had finally declared their love and he had the courage to have secured that precious love with a marriage proposal of his own.

And this time, it was bona fide.

Considering all this seriousness as he returns to his second row pew seat under awareness of King Agdar's icy glared death wish trained upon his every step, Hans feels both Elsa and Anna's gazes beaming at him. One was as exceedingly approving as the other highly amused, and both instinctively sensed some of what he had indicated to his repentant parent.

The result of which causes his entire freckled face to violently blush a deep shade of pinkish red as the liturgical service continues to march forward.

Mother Superior gives a stirring recount of the Old Testament Genesis story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, a description of a rivalry between twelve brothers that God's miraculous plan used to save all of His children, through Joseph's wisdom and forgiving love.

Hans' now fitting favorite childhood Bible tale seemed to make another significant impression over his clan of real-life jealous tormentor brethren.

 _"_ _But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive_." Genesis 50:20

The words of Hans' Bible hero Joseph echo in his mind, he now fully understanding the span and depth of the story—how what once seemed incomprehensibly wrong and horrible and unjust—was actually just a path, a way to a better end that God planned.

 _All to make a person stronger and wiser, to have the chance at true happiness, if we only trust and believe that everything happens for a reason_. Hans shakes his head in abrupt understanding, eyes closed tightly at the self revelation.

As the Communion procession takes place, each stop by his aisle to give the overwhelmed teary-eyed 'Squirrel' a forgiving familial handshake and some heartfelt wordless nods of apology in silent inward confession of their sins to God before partaking in the communion of the Lord's Supper.

"May the peace of the Lord be with you all, as we go to greet this lovely day in celebration of our sovereign King Herbert's special occasion with the warm Sun of our souls, our merciful and righteous Lord's love in each of our hearts. 'Let your light shine before all men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is in Heaven.'" Sister Angelika Clarice completes the Lord's directives in the uplifting Matthew 5:16 verse at the end of her common prayer's closing to the special mass.

The older woman looks out over Louise's boys for once in all of her unappreciated visits with contented joy rather than sad disappointment.

Her own aching heart that was blessedly assured in His eternal plan, was pleased most of all to see her youngest charge - who had been sent away to her care in the Fattigskole convent's seclusion all those long lonely years in familial exile - had now not only been accepted by his kith and kin, but also by the lovely young woman with the faithful devotion behind her crystal clear azure eyes gazing adoringly up at him.

King Herbert looks on proudly with an emotion he had not felt the decades – if ever – that surpassed any physical birthday gift from the ample offerings from any foreign leaders and dignitaries and all the gold and finery that would be presented to him this day.

Herbert had, despite the mirror shard that had been wedged between his lungs and heart for the majority of his life, crippling him mentally and emotionally, still paid attention to all his sons in small ways.

Though the cold mirror warped his outlook on life to be cold, disinterested and detached in his covetous quest to take over other nations, by attrition one way or another, all it took was a bold and daring, cool breeze to set him right.

That one precious young woman had wiped away his harsh, insatiable world view with her delicate hands that held magic powers beyond this world. But none more magical then the Queen of Norway's shared compassion of a God who could change hearts with the love his Louise always strived to help her stubborn King see.

"Thank you." King Herbert soundlessly mouths as he, on Kaleb's arm, passes the second pew row where Elsa was standing beside her little sister Anna, as the King meets the Ice Queen's blue eyes with a respectful nod.

In those eyes, Louise's little boy full lofty dreams and gallant hopes seemed to finally have found his longed for home. The Danish King gives Prince Hans a profound look of inclusion.

As the church service that had the befitting theme of 'Repentance and Forgiveness' draws to a close, a heart at peace King Herbert leads the procession out with Sister Angelika on his first son Prince Kaleb's arm and he on illustrious second son, Prince Anders', their wives Princess Emma and Princess Frederika together in the procession.

In the confusion of the exodus from the chapel as Anna ducks behind to gain her own husband Kristoff's escort. And Elsa slips her own icy digits into Hans' warm ones, as the affianced pair together sing praises to the Lord with their beautiful voices that matched in perfect melody and harmony. These no longer star-crossed lovers had been given a second chance at life, filled with the holy sacrament of forgiveness's unending light.

Face to face again, Elsa and Hans felt that light of forever, exquisitely intertwined in one another's eyes and hands and hearts, full the sentiment of love for one another. This thoughtful couple meant to never let go of this precious bond again as the bright sun brilliantly greets the new pair of lovers who follow the church recession outside to leave the Egeskov Chapel.

With Idun grasping Agdar's arm tight so he could not make a scene when he notes Elsa again with that Dane behind him, they trail King Freidrich with Queen Arianna, and Czar Nicolas following King Herbert, Sister Angelika and the vicar in lead.

Queen Elsa was grateful to have her handsome Prince Hans at her side, so gentlemanly bow to request her slender arm as they join the recessional. Her sprightly, sunflower design dressed sister bounces out into the church aisle with Kristoff looking rather dashing in this golden yellow with slick black crisscrossed belted uniform at her back.

She glances down at her sparkling engagement ring finger with secret bliss.

The beautiful closing hymn 'Blest Be the Ties That Bind' hails the Arendelle and Corona royal families out to join the Egeskov clan they would evermore be entangled with because of what that snowflake circlet represented, for a birthday party to remember.

 _'Blest be the tie that binds_ _  
 _our hearts in Christian love;_  
 _the fellowship of kindred minds_  
 _is like to that above.__

 _Before our Father's throne  
we pour our ardent prayers;  
our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,  
our comforts and our cares._

 _We share each other's woes,  
our mutual burdens bear;  
and often for each other flows  
the sympathizing tear._

 _When we asunder part,_ _  
 _it gives us inward pain;_  
 _but we shall still be joined in heart,_  
 _and hope to meet again.'__

* * *

Hello, Frozen Again friends!

This epilogue started being so long, that we decided to release this front half as a full chapter. I hope you enjoyed it! It included much spiritual closure for the House of Egeskov, churchlife in the 19th century was a vital part of society in Denmark in that era.

All past wrongs are being wrapped up with repentance being rewarded with forgiveness for King Herbert and his sons. Hans is gleaning the benefits of Elsa's gentle, spiritual influence on the Danish kingdom.

Not to mention Hans enjoying the benefits of Helsa's romance heating up, with plentiful intimate touches and soft kisses for our cool Ice Queen and Red hot Prince!

Reviews are welcome! ^_^

And don't forget, the final epilogue that will tie into Book 3's plot is still to come, hopefully, by White Day, mid-March, so please keep watching for that!

God bless you!

HarukaKou

P.S. If you want to see gorgeous Kristoff in his dashing golden yellow Danish Guardsman uniform he's currently wearing in this episode from that timeframe, Setsuna CG'edited him in it for me!Yellow's my favorite color! Look at her Tumblr : QueenElsaWestergaard dot tumblr dot com to see! :) So cute, Kristly! We can't decide which one is best! So you can vote which one you like, too!

* * *

' _From every stormy wind that blows'_ \- Hymn written by Hugh Stowell 1828

 _'Blest be the tie that binds' -_ Hymn written by John Fawcett _& _ Hans G. Nageli 1782


	29. Chapter 29 - Betrothal

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 29**

 **"Betrothal"**

Despite the morning's agitation and confusion of violence, the Garden Party for King Herbert's seventieth birthday celebration kicks off just as Princess Emma had planned. The servants, caterers and extra hired help in Egeskov's downstairs staff had everything running like clockwork, as if nothing untoward had occurred in the castle at all.

The proper British Princess and her dutiful husband, Prince Kaleb, play host and hostess to the large quantity of visitors from many nations who had come to pay their respects for this old tyrant of a Royal King on his celebratory day.

But none of them expected their obligatory visit to the staid and dank noble house of Denmark to be so pleasantly inviting and playfully sunny.

The busy maids and footmen had set up a buffet of cold _Smørrebrød_ (open sandwiches) under a large tent for the alfresco luncheon. The feast was replete with foodstuffs like tea cakes and crumpets to cucumber sandwiches, and Danish delights of _Leverpostej_ (liver pâté and mushrooms on brown bread) _Røget laks_ (smoked salmon with lemon and dill on white bread), _ål med røræg_ (smoked eel with eggs on rye) and _saltkød_ (salted beef on dark rye).

The King's grandchildren were increased in number by the arrival of some townsfolk children who generally weren't fond of coming anywhere near this stuffy place, but were intrigued by the rumor of a giant friendly Snow Beast at Egeskov. The happy children had been playing with the exuberant snowgies and a smiling contented Marshmallow, who never experienced so much attention before—and liked it.

When the hungry children smelled the scents of the alfresco luncheon being served under the big tent, it took all of Olaf and his new friend Lukas' control to keep the playful snowgies from totally overturning the pleasurable, orderly buffet into a topsy-turvy mess.

The Southern Isles princes and their wives were beside themselves trying to contain the mischievous creatures from wreaking havoc as they beckon their own children from being caught up or joining in on the multiple exasperating snowgies' chaos.

That is, until the Ice King stepped out of the church and down to the lush lawns of the BeechGarden under Egeskov's plane trees and weeping beeches. There the mischievous snowgies and children from the town had been dangling upon the long strand beech vines to cause trouble for the poor beleaguered Southern Isles servants who were just trying to do their jobs for the King's buffet.

"If I may, Your Majesty?" As they exit the Chapel service, King Agdar had enough respect and good sense to not pull rank and overstep his authority on this foreign soil to ask King Herbert, who was standing there with his sons looking more amused than perplexed at this raucous snowgie sight as they came out of the chapel.

"By all means, King Agdar." Herbert had the sense to step back and survey what the mysterious ruler of their neighbors to the North could do to relieve this pandemonium on his estate grounds.

" **CEASE**!" All it took was for the ice King to raise his deep baritone voice with a frosty extended hand and each and every one of the naughty snowgies is sent a harsh subzero chill, hanging in the air around them. His ice freezes their snowball feet in place, making it known to the snowgies that their playtime was officially over.

"Whew! Wouldn't want to get on _that_ Ice Papa's banana split list." Eugene mumbles under his breath to Hans as the two good-looking men watch the entire countryside, previously filled with bustling waiters and noisy children and laughing snowmen go dead silent in the commanding Ice King's wake.

"Heh heh heh." Hans nervously smiles in guilt at Elsa on his arm in response to that unpleasant circumstance his brother presented to the forefront of his thoughts.

"Impressive, Agdar. Thank you for your able assistance." King Herbert shows gratitude to the Norwegian sovereign who was in the same age group as his elder sons.

"I was afraid for a moment there, Elsie, my dear, that your little Snowman Army had declared war on my poor birthday luncheon buffet." Laughing it off to disarm his anxious guests, wary guardsmen, uptight sons and perplexed servants, a wide eyed King Herbert comments with a chuckle and a hand that signaled the standdown order that subdued his own riled up army rushing to protect their leader from the frosty melee invasion.

"Do pardon my little friends, your Majesty. They don't get out much to have proper table manners, I'm afraid. I have to teach them better etiquette in the future." Elsa politely joins in the King's kindly snigger until something untoward catches her eye. "Oh! Is that my…?!Excuse me, Sire!" Under her Papa's displeased gaze, a panicked Elsa breaks away from Hans' arm and blushes in embarrassment at some of her snowgies' royal faux pas to be parading around in her dainty lace undergarments.

It appears that while the adults were in chapel, Marshmallow had subserviently allowed the multitude of little girls to play dress-up with Elsa's clothes from the clever compartments in the Snow Beast that show-off Olaf had been proudly demonstrating.

The Queen of the Ice hurries forward to round up the frozen solid and stiff snowgies that had fainted over in place at Ice King Agdar's unexpected pinpointed deeper-freeze. Chuckling, Anna instantly springs into action to help an exasperated Olaf get reunited with his head that had been spinning around the ground distressingly after the mischievous snowgies had tripped the dizzy snowman.

"That I would like to see you do in that constricted gown, my girl! Ho Ho Ho!" Entertained, King Herbert continues to chortle as he watches the tall blonde beauty dash to and fro. Like a lithe wisp of wind to the best of her abilities in that obstructive purple regal long skirt and high heels, Elsa chases a headless Olaf and the snowgies alike in humiliation of her private lingerie on display.

"Excuse me, Father. But my Queen seems to require some assistance in this delicate matter." A dutiful yet undeniably amused Hans was just about to join Elsa and Olaf's raucous roundup when King Herbert halts his youngest son with a hand to his arm.

"I'm sure you, as a man, do prefer the elegant Queen Elsa in her sultry pale blue gown over this prim violet one too, eh, Hans?" Still the rogue even at his accumulated age, Herbert pulls his son aside to murmur his approval of the leggy Norwegian Queen's more titillating and revealing alternate attire.

"Indeed. A-hem…" Taking his parent's cue to look the racing around Elsa up and down, Prince Hans shares the wolfish smile that he quickly wipes off his face under King Agdar's vigilant eye.

The abashed redhead could only blush deeper when the Ice Queen must pause in her wandering to bend over in her purple skirt and show a tempting little bit of petticoat ankle to every keen male eye watching her merry chase from the Egeskov Chapel steps.

But a smiling Hans could not entirely erase the silly simper on his face when he receives his first glimpse of his fiancée's undergarments, à la the frozen solid snowgie totem pole that had been the dress-up model for Hans' playful little princess nieces.

"Eek!" With a mortified shriek and a terrorized ashen face, Elsa shoots Hans an embarrassed look as she quite comically stuffs the lacy garments under her purple jacket in humiliation to him especially for having a close up peek show.

"Don't just stand there gawking, Red! Come on, Cousin Eugene! Get the lead out! Let's get back Elsa's clothes for her! Help me roundup those bad snowgies!" Plucky Anna shows her familiarity with men – _especially these two brothers who got on her nerves all the time_ – as she skitters down the chapel steps to smack Hans upside the back of his dreamy redhead with one hand and Eugene's tight tush with her other arm to get a move on. Unmindfully not sharing Elsa's misery of her private collection on display, Anna follows her Kristoff's gallant lead to come to the lady in distress' aid by plucking corseted snowgies up off the frozen ground.

"I do like your daughters, Agdar. They have such spirit, rarely seen in snobbish Royal princesses nowadays." King Herbert says to the King of Arendelle in approbation.

"Bozhe moi. ( _My God_!) _"_ Russian Czar Nicholas was one of the first foreign dignitaries brave enough to step out of the church sanctuary into the frozen invasion to comment to his Danish and Norwegian counterparts. "They remind me of my girls a bit." The big Russian bear turns his eyes to glance proudly at his Princess Eugenia and Maria who were curiously peeking out from the Egeskov Chapel on each of their claimed Danish twin Prince's arms.

"Yes. My nieces can be a refreshing pair," Stroking his salt-and-pepper beard, King Friedrich joins in the fatherly conversation, reiterating Herbert's sentiment. He similarly felt reinvigorated by Elsa and Anna's running around to collect the squirrelly snowgies wherever the snowball creations had been frozen, terrified, in place.

But each happy little creature was a-bounce with wriggling energy again when they saw their soft 'mama' Elsa approach them to gather them up in her inviting arms.

"Why, thank you for your kind compliment to our girls, Majesties. Elsa and Anna always have been my husband's and my own pride and joy. Right, my love?" Queen Idun takes the opportunity to fill in the response of Agdar's disapproving dropped jaw when he sees feisty Anna unashamedly hike up her sunflowery skirt almost all the way up. Her bloomers once again were in full display to use her skirt as a hammock to carry her load of frozen cold wiggling snowgies that she had captured.

"Oh, yes. Absolutely, my pet. Our pride and joy." Only half hearing what Idun said, Agdar's perturbed mouth frowns even further to survey that Danish youngest Prince so naturally and gallantly climb back up over the edge of a cliff that he had fearlessly leapt over to kneel at Elsa's feet.

Prince Hans had gone to rescue some ice block imprisoned snowgie who had wobbled its way down over the cliff's ledge where it precariously almost fell into the sea below.

"Remind you of another dashing young Prince and his lady fair on another cliff ledge, Agdar?" Leaning her warm head to his shoulder, Queen Idun was quietly testing the icy waters – so to speak – of her mate's acceptance of this inevitable discovery.

"Elsa is no man's lady fair, Idun." Acting more like the pigheaded ostrich than the noble King he arguably was, Agdar could be so very obtuse when his stubborn mind wished to deny the facts.

 _You are not going to make this easy, are you, min älskare?_ The indigo-eyed Arendelle Queen could instinctively feel her husband's icy hackles rise each time Hans and Elsa's hands brushed and eyes met when they were exchanging reclaimed snowgies together.

As for Eugene, he was rather enjoying being more lackadaisical on the trail picking up stray bits of Elsa's clothing that the snowgies had discarded along the way. More industrious Rapunzel was with Cassandra and the Snuggly Duckling guys helping Kristoff use his ropes, climbing tackle and six foot five height to reach the last frozen solid snowgie who had gotten himself tangled up in the tall weeping beech tree at the center of the vast lawn.

But Cassandra's friend Owl, in conjunction with brave Pascal in a plucky pet team-up, beat the industrious humans to un-snag the final erstwhile snowgie popsicle that plops down into Marshmallow's apologetic monstrous hands.

Now that the snowgies were cleared away the lunch buffet could slowly come back into order.

Elsa, Kristoff and Anna take the wily miscreants to be secured one more time in Marshmallow's compartment to be ready for the long journey home later today.

So that left a breathless Prince Hans alone to return to his father and the two older Royal couples watching in varying degrees of admiration, astonishment, and trepidation.

"Your Majesty, King Agdar. If I may be so bold as to request a private audience with you for a few short moments, concerning an urgent, yet delicate subject?" Finally catching his breath, Hans, as eloquently sincere as possible, quietly approaches the chapel steps to ask to have a respectful conversation with Elsa's debonair, cool-eyed father.

Agdar simply stares at Hans for several seconds intimidatingly before he speaks.

"What subject would that be, young man?" The icy edge in his voice and ice hackles still at Agdar's neck were enough for Idun to know that this was not exactly the right moment to approach the taboo subject yet.

"Oh, doesn't that food have a divine scent, Primmy? It makes me realize that Agdar and I have not had a proper meal since we left Elsa's North Mountain Ice Palace where Gerda made us a lovely meal of her famous roast beef." Idun speaks quite frankly with her elder sister Queen Arianna at her side. "And it has been forever since I have had the taste of a true Danish fish fry buffet. That was what we had when we came to Prince Kaleb and Princess Emma's engagement party, was it not, Agdar? I do highly recommend it, Friedrich." Agdar's wife cunningly and adeptly changes the conversation with a saccharin smile etched across her pretty face.

Artful Idun drags her irritated partner towards the tantalizing luncheon buffet's scents. Most of the other guests had already been escorted by Egeskov's Royal Guard to skirt by the snowgie chaos to join their hosting Southern Isles princes and princesses in partaking of the luncheon outdoor meal.

 _After all, a man is always in a more receptive mood on a full, rather than empty, stomach._ At least, Elsa's mother could hope that was true. Idun hums the Heddrick and Horn merry tune of 'Cherry Ripe' as she leads her difficult customer into the line of hobnobbing diplomats.

She knew that he, as a proper gentleman, would be attentive in public to his wife's every whim in serving her at this buffet to keep his jealous mind off other perplexing subjects. Queen Idun silently prays to God that this interim would cool down her Agdar's growing hostility towards Elsa's young man, at least for the time being.

 _'Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,_

 _Ripe I cry,_ _  
 _Full and fair ones_  
 _Come and buy._  
 _Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,_  
 _Ripe I cry,_  
 _Full and fair ones__

 _Come and buy.'_

* * *

Giving her confidante Cassandra the high signal as she finishes helping Daphne clean up the snowgies' mess, Princess Rapunzel zips away from the church recession line with a purposeful smile on her pretty face.

"What bee's got your bonnet, Sunshine? I swear! I gave Her Legginess back her underthings… _Most of them_." A guilt ridden Flynn Rider, who had just sidled up to Princess Rapunzel to be her proper escort to the delicious scented buffet for extra brownie points, squeaks out. He watches with a sigh his zippity-do-da wife race along the drawbridge.

Emerging from the church behind him, Cassandra gives a saucy salute and smirk back at the ditched husband whose offered hand was dropped like a hot potato when the spirited Princess of Corona had an idea. The conspiring black leather gloved ladies' companion pushes past Eugene to catch up to her friend, soon right on Rapunzel's speedy tail.

"Fine. I'll find other distractions to keep me entertained while you two do your own thing." Eugene shakes his head with a resigned simper at the bright sunshiny flower who had a certain shine all around her. He watches his Rapunzel and her shapely ladies' maid disappear around the drawbridge and into the back door of EgeskovCastle with a proud roving eye.

Not so long thereafter, the group of Snuggly Duckling thugs each give the astonished pastor they pass by at the chapel door grateful nods, toothy smiles, or grubby handshakes for the service as they stream out of the church and cross the bridge behind _Lady_ Cassandra's sassy swaying hips' lead.

Her father, Captain Schmidt and his Corona guard were not too far at her rear, to merely keep an eye on the criminal thugs, though the aromatic food they were leaving behind was tempting.

By the time the congregation full of royals, diplomats and dignitaries alike had gathered out of respect for the King's seventieth birthday celebration buffet taking place in the BeechGarden on that side of the moat, the festivities clear across the Egeskov Royal estate were already well underway.

From a sumptuous buffet the servants and extra hired bakers and cooks from Kvaerndrup township had laid out in a tent nearby the chapel in the Beech Garden; to the extempore carnival-like atmosphere of the lavish fete Rapunzel had asked her new friends, Princesses Lujza, Amalia and Hermine to spontaneously help set up for the Danish monarch's birthday jubilantly in the Hops Garden to the West end of the estate; and the children being entertained by docile and passive 'straight man' Marshmallow and stand-up comedian Olaf doing tricks way up in the north hills—the entire Southern Isles Kingdom was aglow for the first time in ages with music, lights, action and sights full of wonder and excitement.

The Snuggly Duckling guys did not disappoint their beloved princess as she put in a request for them to add Corona's finest _artistes_ to the outdoor jamboree as her own special gift to her new 'father-in-law' and the extended family the once shut-in, lonely girl always so desperately longed to now embrace.

So, with the aid of her creative, offbeat bohemian ragtag friends from home and the new Princess sisters she had made fast and dear friends with here in Egeskov, Rapunzel had set up a fun festival with fire eating, knife throwing, puppet shows, piano playing, mime and masquerade type entertainment and other jolly amusements that stoic and proper Egeskov had never seen the likes of before.

"This is so amazing, 'Punzy! I never thought I'd live to see actual flamethrowers and pantomimes on Egeskov grounds! It's like the carnivals I loved to watch roll by our estate but never was allowed to attend as a little girl! You are so brave to suggest it and have your funny friends perform for us!" Whispering mirthfully with that baby lamb squished in her keyed up arms, Princess Hermine was beside herself with glee. She was certain she was in seventh heaven.

Especially to have her strict Berte raise his glass and smile to her as he was walking across the drawbridge from the buffet on the other side of the moat after he allowed her – in fact, _suggested_ – that she go and see the circus-like spectacle up close with her new friend, Princess Rapunzel. It seemed Prince Berte had taken his father's words and moving church sermon to heart.

"I'm glad you're having so much fun, Hermine!" Rapunzel squeezes the young blonde's frilly arm beneath hers. "I hope King Herbert is enjoying it, too. Oh, let's go wish the birthday boy a happy day." Rapunzel cuts across the pleasantly crowded Hops Garden and back to the Beech garden taxi-ed on Sven with the terrified Hermine on the reindeer's back. The pregnant pair giggle uncontrollably at the astounding events, bizarre sights and thrilling amusements they and their happy unborn babies were both partaking of.

"Happy birthday, King Herbert." Wearing her prettiest smile, spirited Princess Rapunzel approaches King Herbert where the man had been conversing with Princes Lars, Mattias and Peiter, along with the Russian Czar and his two daughters with Princes Rune and Ruddi on their respective arms.

"Thank you, Princess–" The King of Denmark turns to answer the pleasant solicitation with an appreciative smile. When Rapunzel stands upon her bare tippytoes to plant a sweet kiss on the old King's cheek, a hot flush sweeps over his surprised features.

"– Rapunzel." Herbert glows with the unexpected warmth he was discovering he liked very well indeed. He shares an amused smile with a tipsy Eugene, who saunters up to his wife.

"Hiya, Toots. Laying the charm on the 'Ole Man, I see. Just beware of this gal's mean frying pan, Pops." Talking behind his hand conspiratorially, Eugene then raises his glass of 'punch' to his father, the King, who chuckles at the jovial, unsophisticated simplicity of his _natural_ child.

The dashingly tanned former thief had just finished flirting with the young maids serving refreshments at the punch bowl. In their wives' absence, the pair of ' _misunderstood good guys'_ hadworked the table together as his devil-may-care, sixth-in-line Storbror Prince Didrik had slipped his personal flask's supply of neat gin into his and Eugene's fruity sweet drink's fare, to liven things up a bit.

"Hermine?" Ignoring her husband, Rapunzel puts her new skittish blonde ditzy friend on the spot. The cocoa haired Prussian Princess urges the terrified young woman to come forward to meet the kinder and gentler, reformed King, too.

"Who? Me? Oh no, no." The trembling girl shivers to be so unexpectedly presented to the frightening father-in-law that she never really conversed with one-on-one before.

But the genial smile creeping across King Herbert's face at the sheepish girl cradling the sleepy lamb in her shy arms causes Hermine's fright to immediately vanish.

"Merry Christmas – I mean – _Happy Birthday_ , your Majesty." In her high squeaky voice, the wobbly kneed Princess of Waldeck flubs her first line of conversation with her imposing father-in-law as she makes a stumbling curtsy.

Under everyone's scrutiny, Hermine wishes she could crawl away under a rock or something as she buries her face into Lambykins freshly shampoo washed fluffy back instead.

"And I thank you, Princess…" At a loss for the slight, and memorable German blonde Princess's name, Herbert looks to the more peppery Prussian young woman for a clue.

"Hermine. Princess Hermine of Waldeck." Rubbing the back of Hermine's curly locks to encouragingly to look up again, Rapunzel fills in the blanks for her shy friend.

"Ah! Berte's pretty little wife, Hermine. I'm very pleased to meet you, truly, at last. After several years of my cold indifference to even give you the time of day, never mind blessing your marriage to my son. Can you forgive an old ogre like me for that lack of concern, my dear?" King Herbert takes a time now to interrupt his conversation with Czar Nicholas about Crown Princess Eugenia's wedding arrangements, to lean down from his son Peiter's sturdy arm and make a complimentary bow before Hermine, who nods into the lamb's folds.

"Welcome to our family, Hermine. My Berte is a very lucky young man to have such an effervescent sweetheart." Petting the little lamb she was cradling to her chest, Herbert had uncovered his own heart enough now to want to extend his to the small girl who was the latest addition to the Westergaard clan, one short summer ago when he could have cared less.

"Yes, indeed, Father." Joining the scene, Prince Berte takes his shrinking violet of a wife under his arm, and completes this as Princess Hermine's Best Day Ever.

Now King Herbert longed to spend time with another shy blonde, who was bold and daring, generous and genuine enough to have changed the Southern Isles King's entire perspective on life from henceforth.

Beautiful Queen Elsa of the North did it all for the love of his shunned last child. An amazing, miraculous love that Herbert wished to see prosper and flourish for many years to come, and perhaps blessedly produce one special child that would join their nations together forever.

Herbert's steely blue eyes scan the music filled carnival-like noises across the raucous scene of knife throwers, dumbbell weight lifting, dart tossing and tattoo artistry dotting Egeskov's prim and trimmed topiary English garden that led into the Renaissance, Hop, and Beech gardens, all filled with excitement.

"Now if you will all excuse me, I must congratulate another young woman soon to be part of our ever-expanding family tree." Herbert gives a courteous nod to the Russian entourage after already coming to an agreement with pleased Czar Nicholas about an exquisite wedding ceremony for Prince Rune and Crown Princess Eugenia with all the frills and bells and whistles and golden finery in St. Petersburg's gold domed Cathedral this coming Christmas time.

"Maybe you should make it a double wedding for the twins before that novelty passes, Pops." In his semi-detached overview of the family he was just now warming up to in his non-sticky way, Eugene brings dehydrated, expectant mother Rapunzel, her new little gal-pal Hermine, and his… Father – _still getting used to that!_ – each a glass of punch ( _non-spiked_ ), balanced in his nimble hands.

"And perhaps you are correct. It would behoove us both to have a double marriage ceremony for Rune's twin and Eugenia's sister who are obviously infatuated with one another, quite fortuitously. That will save us all a trip to the frozen Artic cold in the heart of winter." King Herbert had to give coquettish little Princess Maria a lot of credit for looking past attractiveness, cleverness, and dexterity to see something few other saw in the somewhat daft, slow, non-becoming face and form of his eleventh child, Prince Ruddi.

"Which is highly probable at Princess Maria's teenaged years of fickleness." Said under his breath, savvy Prince Berte had accompanied gregarious Eugene with a plate loaded with cucumber sandwiches – _cucumbers are excellent for bearing sons_! – for his own pregnant wife as well as Rapunzel to share.

"I like you, Berte. You don't pull punches when it comes to telling it like it is. Shocking, really, for a lawyer. No insult intended. Maybe I'll need your services one day." Eugene prattles to the Prince as Berte rolls his eyes, who had been just putting up with his old father's… _mistake_.

But Eugene's glass of Didrik's alcohol concentrated spiked punch did a number on his already minimal tact as Rapunzel passes a baah-ing Lambykins from Hermine to him.

"Ah, my lovely, sporadically tempered wife has returned my favorite fluff toy to me. I guess you want to apologize for leaving me in the lurch earlier." Eugene drawls out smugly with that crass smirk glued on his stubbly face down at her.

But he has to quickly amend his tone when Rapunzel turns around and dashes off with Hermine when she sees Anna directing a cooperative Kristoff to have him and his flying troupe bustling about with the horde of Danish female grandchildren in tow.

"Now where are you off to, Brownie? You're harder to catch than a firefly in a bottle!" After letting out the frustrated complaint, a sighing Eugene sees that familiar glint in sparkling Rapunzel's eye as she blows a kiss over her shoulder to him, and he loves her all the more for it. "But you're my firefly." The slightly drunken thief, who excelled more in the enigma of love and marriage than many would think, smiles deliriously at his free-spirited woman, heading in the songful direction her light had traveled.

As her part in the festivity Rapunzel suggested, bubbly Anna had offered to train the female children to sing in choral rounds for the fun of it while each waited their turn in line to fly on Sven, Svala or the three Snow Queen horses, Nysnaer, Snaedis, and Flurru. The royal girls who had never experienced such freedom and excitement, aged from excited one-year-old Petunia to visibly drooling on the blond muscleman twenty-two-year-old Eleanor, instantly took to the Arendelle Princess' vivacious sense of joy.

"Have any of you seen my youngest boy and his lovely new fiancée? Did you know that through this union we are going to unite our Scandinavian island nations at long last, with close ties to your continental land as well?" In his wandering search for Hans and Elsa, King Herbert bumps into King Friedrich, Rapunzel's father, near the buffet table in the scenic Beech garden.

Heavyset King Friedrich had been gorging himself on Egeskov's cook, Mrs. Patmore's, tasty fried foods as his watchful Arianna was too busy with her little sister to monitor his dietary intake at this indulgent buffet.

"Ooph. Why, Herbert! I was just telling my French friend here how impressive your equestrian stables in Egeskov here are alleged to be. Is there a chance to get sneak a peek over your fine collection of horses? I've been considering opening the Corona races, and your steeds would be invited to enter." Friedrich pauses in eating the sumptuous overindulgent eats to inquire of another subject he was more hungry for these past years of being a shut-in with ill health.

 _As long as my doting flower Arianna doesn't catch me overeating these no-no foods, we will survive the day…Heehee…_

"Yes, yes. We can take a tour of the Ladegården later, Friedrich." King Herbert dismissively answers the Prussian King as he continues to look over the crowd. The birthday boy had earlier seen the elegant Queen of Norway making her rounds with the diplomatic corps who all wished to speak with her and her recently discovered to be alive father.

"Our Ice Queen Elsa is holding court in the direction of that cold buffet tent, I believe, by the ice cream table she is the tasteful mistress of." At the mention of ice cream, salivating King Friedrich extols how his frost friendly niece excelled at cold sweet delights, after he had already taken a turn at that section of the buffet party.

"The mint chocolate is very nice indeed, Herbert! I'll be waiting for you in the stables!" As he calls after Herbert like they had been childhood friends all their lives, the King of Corona had a charming way of pleasantry nowadays that could not be denied as agreeable.

* * *

"King Agdar! You are a difficult man get a hold of! I believe most of my guests are more interested to meet you and your attractive daughter at my birthday party than I. But who can blame them? Your Elsa is a breathtaking sight who deserves the spotlight more than we boring old curmudgeons, eh?" King Herbert, sensing Elsa's discomfort, makes an effort to draw her chilly, unsociable father out of the cool of the tent that he had quickly retreated to, away from the bustling crowds.

"Come, man! Meet with us in the Ladegården to look over the steeds your brother-in-law is so keen on!" Even a bit more light on his heels due to the invigorating glass of punch Eugene had provided to raise the old gent's worn spirits, Herbert leans heavily on Prince Lars to curry him over to the stables.

The intellectual Southern Isles Prince had taken up his turn to escort his father in their princely tag team to be his kindly sire's live crutch.

King Agdar looks up to King Herbert's projected voice from were he was rejuvenating near the dessert table of the cool iced end under the buffet tent.

Back to duty after that thrilling snowgie round-up with Hans, Elsa had been tucked again under the safety of her Papa's cool arm. Trying to keep her as far away from that boy during this raucous festive celebration as possible, Agdar again had feigned a desire for his learned child to reintroduce to him each and every one of the curious dignitaries and Royal envoys who wanted to meet the enigmatic visiting monarchs of mysterious Arendelle.

But when Elsa saw the maids Ethel and Jane struggling with a new-fangled ice cream machine churn, similar to one Oaken back home invented, the generous Ice Queen insisted on helping her harried downstairs friends to set into motion the new mechanism with greater ease.

An attentive Prince Hans was contented to meld unobtrusively unseen in the background, donning a disguise cap over his flaming red hair and the apron of a mere waiter over his naval uniform. He carried in the supplies necessary to assist the busy ladies as a wordlessly able-bodied volunteer to do the heavy lifting for them.

Elsa did not recognize the incognito prince at first, until his laughing eyes betrayed him, along with those stylish sideburns Elsa found so very alluring, that incriminatingly peered out from his crooked cap.

As he shushes her with a silencing finger to his playful lips for fear the brooding King discussing naval talk with the envoy of Greece just a few feet away would see, Elsa comes to the conclusion that she could not love her clever Prince Hans Westergaard more.

Working together under cover of disguise with his furtively smiling, obliged Queen, Hans cranks the handle of the manual device. It was connected to an outer wooden pail, filled with crushed ice that Elsa magically kept replenishing to a frazzled then dazzled Ethel's silently clapping delight. An inner pewter cylinder contained the ice cream mix to be frozen that boy genius Hans, when all others were confounded, discerned how to bolt the lid and insert the dasher handle through the top of it he would then churn like a butter turner to freeze the two different ice cream flavors.

Elsa was proud to serve the chocolate and vanilla hand-churned desserts to all of the happy little children popping in with Anna after a stopover ride on Sven to enjoy.

Though her sister had given a certain incognito redhead a poke or two, King Agdar continued to remain unaware that the devoted prince had been dotingly ever present at Elsa's side, fetching her drinks and sandwiches that she felt spoiled to politely refuse. That is, until he came back with some cold American southern style fried chicken that Elsa of Arendelle was secretly a sucker for.

But as the battered fried finger food was a tad messy for a Queen's dainty gloved digits to hold, Hans chivalrously came up with a solution that he would hold the chicken leg for Elsa to nibble on, so as not to soil her satin gloved fingers.

"We are requested to visit the King's stables. That is an extremely ridiculous guise, young man. Elsa, Come." The Ice King's extra frigid glare up and down at the discovered in masquerade, thirteenth Danish Prince in compromising intimate proximity with his daughter, was enough to freeze the stoutest of hearts, as he purposely moves himself towards the entrance of the tent, fully waiting and expecting Elsa to follow.

Hans sighs. He had silently been waiting for that window of opportunity to address King Agdar when they were relatively alone. Unfortunately, that appeared to be a long time coming as Agdar seemed to always relocate to an inconveniently populated area, as if the King of Norway was eager never to be left alone with the redhead.

 _Does he already know that it is my intention to seek his daughter Elsa's hand? Am I that abhorrent? You know the answer already, Hans. I_ _am_ _not good enough for her._

His tentative psyche not quite strong enough for all the obvious rejection, Hans almost slips back into his unworthy depressing mindset of melancholy.

But he is saved from his somber thoughts by Elsa _accidentally_ pressing her lips on Hans' fingers instead of the fried chicken leg he was still perfunctorily holding out for her so she wouldn't have her pristine hands dirtied by one of her secret cravings.

Elsa smiles at him coyly from beneath heavy lashes with the flirtatious nibbled tease she could not resist, to lighten his obviously dejected spirits.

So instead of sinking into his uncertain doldrums, Prince Hans felt emboldened to share a confidence building chuckle with the lithe blonde. Elsa wordlessly bats her long lashes above her luminescent azure blue eyes at him, giving Hans all the courage he needed to face her difficult father, and then some.

 _Oh, Elsa! I would walk through fire for you, my darling Snowflake._

"King Agdar, while we stroll, if I may intrude into your conversations as I escort yourself and your daughter to the Ladegården complex, Sir, on a subject I cannot abstain from addressing for a moment longer?" Disrobing from the waiter's apron swiftly, Hans pivots on nimble legs to quickly gain ground between them as Agdar collects Elsa on his arm and walks from the tent towards the stable.

"I believe I can discern the way." Agdar answers dismissively the Southern Isles Prince who had taken a deep breath to speak calmly and succinctly, with viridescent sparkling eyes upon his platinum blonde ice beauty at her father's other side.

"Perhaps your Vise Admiral is more familiar with his birthplace than you, Agdar." The King lets out a super-cooled puffed out sigh when he keenly felt his persuasive wife's demanding eyes seep into the back of his hoarfrost thick skull.

Queen Idun and her older sister Arianna had quickly cut through the host of people milling about the garden luncheon to moderate this anticipated confrontation moment between father and suitor.

Fortuitously, the older women had been conveyed by phaeton carriage across the drawbridge to the Ladegården by mannerly Prince Ivers on his way to the main castle to fetch an umbrella for his easily sunburned wife.

Idun had overheard Hans' courteous request for the King's ear, and Agdar's rude reply to him. As she picks up her pace to catch up to the pair of men with a timid Elsa caught in between, Queen Idun's eyes implore a little kindness and respect from her terse husband to the Royal Prince he had named second-in-command of his Navy.

"Fine. What is it you need of me, sir?" Agdar finally turns to answer this persistent young man.

"Your Majesty. May I start by saying, your daughter Elsa is the most lovely, gracious, special creature that the Lord has ever graced this earth with." Hans pauses to swallow as he begins the lines he had rehearsed so many times in his head.

Elsa gives him an encouraging nod as she walks along on the other side of her quick-stepping father while Hans keeps pace with them.

Hans continues on, despite the Ice King's unflinching glare back at him as the trio walk at a clipped gait towards the stable, with Queens Idun and Arianna not too far behind.

"I have witnessed how precious a treasure Elsa is to you and your wife, and out of respect for you, King Agdar, Queen Idun, I pledge my life to protect her all my days, and serve her with every ounce of strength to the last breath in me, if you would allow me the utmost honor of asking your daughter for her –" A nervous Hans delivers the most important speech to another man he would ever make in the whole of his life.

"What stallions you've raised here, Herbert!"

An expressive voice exclaimed interrupts a serious Hans from somewhere inside the Ladegården stable that the Arendelle family was fast approaching.

Upon entering, Agdar, Elsa, Hans and Idun watch as Queen Arianna rushes in to hush her worked up mate before he causes his weak heart another calamity.

"There you are, my Flower! I wonder how many hands high this brute is compared to our fine group of equestrians back home! Look at these impressive creatures! Fjord horses are one of the finest breeds. They would give our Percherons a run for their money! We have been considering opening a horse racing course in Corona's vast open fields." King Friedrich was always quite enthused about horses and everything about the large and powerful mounted animals for as long as she knew him. But his declaration of sponsoring a new Corona racecourse was new to his Queen's ears.

"Were we, Friedrich?" She cautiously asks her husband who seemed more imaginative and excitable, ready to embrace life now that he had recovered from his terrible illness. Arianna loved her Friedrich far too much to ever stifle his new and interesting flights of fancy if it kept him happy and healthy.

She simply had to rein him in from time to time, before he hurt himself.

"I believe these steeds would give even our Maximus valid competition if they entered in our games, wouldn't they, Eugene? Where did that boy get off to, Maximus?" King Friedrich speaks to the large white Percheron, whom Captain Schmidt had parked in this vicinity of the stables, as if he were a sentient human being.

Always expecting him to be there, King Friedrich glances around for Rapunzel's husband and father of their future grandchildren for his opinion, knowing that his son-in-law had a special relationship with their nation's prize equestrian and head of the Royal guard named Maximus.

"I told him we had important business here in the stables…" King Friedrich makes a displeased face that Eugene was not present in the stables, as a proper son-in-law should be easily accessible to his father-in-law's every whim.

Maximus glances around, wandering off to fetch his missing rival/friend for the King as Prince Anders' prize winning thoroughbred snorts at him and these annoying intruders snootily.

"A fine steed, indeed, Friedrich. And an excellent question. Czar Nicholas, you too are an enthusiast of horse racing, I believe. Why don't you and Friedrich talk to my stable man, Old Ned. He'll know all about the details of every horse in this stable fit for racing. We have the most superb standards for breeding our preeminent stallions with choice mares from around the world. It is all in the blood lineage suitability after all." King Herbert says to the Corona and Russian monarchs concerning the sport of Kings they were all interested in.

"Ah, Agdar! I see you brought your Elsie and my Hans with you. I must say they make a handsome couple, our children, don't they?" Herbert goes from one example of Danish good breeding matches to another, more close to his now expanded heart.

King Herbert links Elsa's hand to rest over Hans'. The sparkling diamond and sapphire engagement ring adorning her significant left hand ring finger was visible for all the world – and her father King Agdar, included – to see.

The Danish king was utterly unaware of the upheaval he had unwittingly just unleashed.

"Now that we are to be family, I wish for our trade relations to prosper and be beneficial to both our countries, Agdar. I cannot imagine a happier birthday present than for my youngest son to announce his betrothal to such a special young woman with a beautiful, generous heart. Bless you, dear Elsie." With this revelation, King Herbert was totally oblivious to Ice King Agdar's blood pressure plummeting to a below subzero freezing point.

Although, every one of the horses in the large stable had enough sense to begin to shudder and whinny and prance around uncomfortably with the ambient cold seizing the Ladegården, King Herbert was still unaware.

He places a kiss upon Elsa's hand entwined with Hans' and smiles proudly up at his son who was looking wide-eyed alarmed at his father and not being able to stop the King's frank statements from being heard.

"Now, bring me to my new stable manager, Lars. Since Rügen has no place here anymore, we have business to discuss with our Prussian neighbor on the diverting subject of a horse racing competition." King Herbert continues to speak, despite Elsa's nervous habit of biting her lower lip, Hans' stiffened posture and Queens Idun and Arianna's mirrored shaking heads all facing him behind the frigid Ice King's incensed back, where the verglas hackles begin to rise exponentially.

 **"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?** " There was quiet anger in his seething whisper, even as the idea had been gnawing at the back of his mind all day like a stabbing knife between the temples that he would not accept. The Ice King bristles with unmitigated displeasure at the sight of Elsa and young Westergaard's conjoined hands at King Herbert's apparent revelation of his daughter's secret betrothal to this _Dane._

"You, sir, had the audacity to sneak around and propose marriage to my daughter without her King's permission! After I have given you my trust as the second highest officer in my land…? You Westergaards never change! You still think you can just look good and swagger in to conquer _anything_ for your taking!" The entire Ladegården shivers as ice smoke begins to exude from the instantly frozen nostrils over King Agdar's crisp moustache. From every pore he spits out his frustrations with wringing hands that almost didn't know if they should hold back or ice blast the slim rascal into a frost freeze ice pop freely.

"King Agdar. If I may assuage your apprehension of my–" Fearlessly, Prince Hans takes the initiative on this critical matter to face Elsa's frostbite threatening parent.

 **"NO, YOU MAY NOT."** The Ice King says in no uncertain terms, cutting off Hans' willing reassurances and alleviation of this father's understandable inquietude.

Agdar's patience with his Vise Admiral was as brittle as a frigid icicle as a haze of verglas frost forms around the angry Norwegian King.

More in fear of losing this chance with Elsa than being threateningly derided by such a fiercesome force of nature, Hans' shaken mind is sent back two years ago again when he had this near exact same exchange of words with another monarch of Arendelle with icy blue eyes that seared right through him–

Even though this forceful denial by her father made him feel small, and not deserving of her love, Hans is frozen, petrified by at the terrible thought of not being allowed to live beside his beautiful Elsa.

"Elsa, gather your sister. We are leaving." Ordered without even meeting his elder daughter's eyes, King Agdar solemnly keeps his cool down with all the control he had in him focused on swiftly extricating himself and his immediate family away from this despised Denmark and all its unsavory inhabitants.

"No, Papa! This is my time!" But instead of obediently obeying her patriarch's edict, the once timid and hesitant Elsa stands her ground for her man.

"I'm not going to run and hide from my feelings nor _conceal_ them any longer! This is my one chance for happiness with the man I love!" Shocking even herself with her public confession, Elsa unashamedly declares her true affection for her Hans to the last person she thought she'd ever tell of her rebellious heart's secret desire so vehemently. Also to have the courage to plead for her dear Papa's blessing of her marriage to the young Prince she had chosen to trust with all her heart.

"Elsa! This pledge of matrimony is too premature for you! Please be reasonable. I recognize that your gifts have expanded as the Ice Queen and you have become proficient in channeling your innate energies. But you're still so naïve in the ways of the world and as a woman in the ways of love. You have little experience with young men to be the judge that this heroic, yet intolerably flawed Dane is the right one for you to pledge your troth to." King Agdar takes his daughter by both her shoulders, looking deeply into Elsa's eyes.

"This young man is the dashing hero of your incredible adventure, certainly, but I beg you to reconsider the rashness of this momentous decision that you may regret for the rest of your life, my Snow Angel." Agdar tries his best to remain calm and unruffled, believing he had succeeded in speaking sense to his befuddled child as sanely and soberly as possible.

"But Papa! Prince Hans has shown his love for me in so many ways. He has risked his life to save myself and Anna and the citizens of Arendelle time after time. He always encourages me to be the best I can be with my powers, building my confidence and teaching me to go beyond myself. He understands me like no one else ever has, and I hear his warm voice inside my very soul. Hans is my warmth. He is my _everything_. Papa, please. I love him. There is nothing to reconsider." Elsa whispers her tearful plea, her chilled fingertips reaching out for Hans' hand that does not flinch against her frosty uncontrolled one as she confesses her true heart.

The Danish Prince, deftly removing Elsa's glove to have proper skin to skin contact, withstands her cryokinetic freeze rather than let her go at this critical juncture. He caresses her frozen hand until it was engulfed in both of his with all the warmth of love and faith he felt for her.

Gazing at the pair of them standing before him holding bare hands, Agdar's harsh troubled brow furrows in consternation until it finally unfurls in to a gentle loving smile.

Her father's powerful hands gently stroke Elsa's platinum locks of her chignon bun that Hans himself had styled for her just two blissful hours ago when they had become engaged.

King Agdar places both his hands on Elsa's trembling shoulders and pulls her close to his Sjoforsvaret naval jacket chest, and away from Hans' reassuring embrace, speaking with a gentle, calming voice tenderly to her.

"My darling Snow Angel. I fully realize how romantic this all must have been to such an inexperienced young woman first starting out in the world on her own. Please allow my wisdom and age's experience to tell how inadvisable it is for such a delicate, innocent heart to blindly rush and blunder into the weighty subject." King Agdar comfortingly holds his daughter close, cradling her in his sturdy arms as he did when she was just a tiny babe.

Elsa, newly reunited with her lost parent appreciated her father's hug, long in coming, as she presses her cheek into her Papa's strong chest.

"Now, please give Prince Hans back his ring like a good girl, my Snow Angel. And then we can all go home to Arendelle and be a proper family again after being robbed of it for so many years. It'll be just like when you and Anna were little girls again, eh? But there will be no more secrets this time, I promise."

King Agdar was not a mean, cold or cruel man – rather, the cold ice that ran through his veins made this father long for the warmth of home and family and love more than most regular men at his age. And yet, the side effects of that craving for familial warmth made him especially possessive of the little girls that he and his wife had sheltered and treasured for those thirteen solitary years locked behind the Arendelle castle gates as a tight, close knit unit of a family.

His heart had cried out to have that precious family back together during these last five terrible long empty years when he thought all hope was lost for any reunion. So that understandable possessiveness had an effect on his refuting his child's marriage to this son of the nation of conquerors he secretly reviled.

"My ring?" Elsa's petrified eyes glance from Hans, who had stepped back to give her and her father some space, to gaze back at her helpless and forlorn, down to the dazzling snowflake platinum and brilliants piece of jewelry he had placed there. She stares at the engagement ring that assured their love forever and devotion to one another in that beautiful scene at the Water Garden of their unforgettable betrothal.

Confused in her surging emotions being pulled in opposite directions by the two men she loved fiercely and had just laid their cases of how they each loved her, Elsa dejectedly spins the silver platinum diamond ring on her finger. She was uncertain of what path to choose, as her father and her lover both look to her with pleading eyes full of affection, concern, and hope she would choose him.

"Pardon us for a moment." Queen Idun had been quietly standing on the sidelines, watching her husband and her daughter interact, hoping against hope that neither would have gone too far and perhaps be able to resolve this on their own without her input.

Sadly, that was not reality, as much as she wished it could be. Queen Idun's thin lips set in a hard-line pucker, ready for battle as she physically separates Elsa from her father and steers her stubborn husband into one of the stalls to the side of the Ladegården stable for a little 'family intervention' session.

"What are you doing? You're embarrassing Prince Hans." Idun says incredulously as the petite framed woman drags her powerful husband, who was on the verge of seething ice from every powerful pore, away before he created an international debacle.

"Idun. I will not allow Elsa to enter into matrimonial agreement with any former criminal who once threatened her life and her sister's, never mind admittedly attempted to overthrow our country. How can you stand there and defend that _Dane,_ when you know what they are!" Agdar was livid in his frosted coldness as he forgoes how to be refined or polite in his blizzard of frozen emotions.

"Agdar Bernadotte! I'm surprised at you! Were you not listening to that beautiful church service with me? Were your ears frozen solid? Or do you choose to pay no heed to the Lord Jesus' message of forgiveness in your heart? Has it become too blind with jealousy and grown so cold that it has forgotten that love can warm a heart and change a life? Were you not paying attention to any of the speakers of the Holy Word prescribing forgiveness and brotherly love to our fellow man? Are we not all 'sinners who come short of the glory of God', and yet are we not all 'worthy of pardon'? The Lord has certainly extend His invitation to that honorable and courageous young man over there, who has truly sought redemption and found it in God's eyes. But that's not good enough for you, is it, _Your Majesty_? I'm ashamed and disappointed that you took His sermon so lightly." In a hushed, yet heartily felt soprano whisper, Queen Idun berates her husband with a repulsed look on her pretty features that told Agdar that he was squarely in the wrong.

"But Idun, she still is a mere child, and he is _still_ a Dane!" Agdar tries to defend his position in a whisper just as fierce to his partner about his lifelong prejudice against the conqueror nation.

"You are in no position to educate your child in this area! Not only have you not yet mastered control of your own ice magic to the point our Elsa already has, but she is now much stronger than you psychologically. She's mature enough to make her own choices, _min älskare._ Stop trying to be a dictator and just be the good father you are." Idun tries to mix in some honey with her vinegar, but Agdar was in such a brown study that he looks away from her helpful guidance, even as she rubs at his ice cold arms.

"And, if I recall, there was a young man, at the lofty age of nineteen years, who felt so experienced in his own self-imposed sheltered world, that he had taken a naïve and impetuous girl of sixteen to his sagacious bosom. I recall that dashing, impulsive Prince who offered that immature girl marriage within a fortnight and wed her before the next spring." Idun, in her reprimand, did not shy away from tossing out several facts back that her pigheaded husband who seemed to have not remembered as clearly as she.

"All without blinking an eye as to the ' _wisdom of a rash decision'_." With her hands placed on her hips defiantly, the lovely royal woman throws her handsome man's words right back at him as the small framed Queen backs her tall commanding husband into the far corner of the empty horse stall.

"Idun?" King Agdar was growing less certain of himself now as his better half was beginning to have her provoking words sink into his disturbed psyche.

"And I know for certain that that girl, though there were many hardships and quarrels and extraordinary circumstances in her time, never once regretted her _naivete_ in judging her heroic young man to be her one true love that she would be content to spend the rest of her days with." The intelligent woman could so easily read her hard-nosed Agdar's worry over Elsa's welfare in such a relationship. Idun knew that this was her king's natural outlet for his fatherly distress and anxiety over being faced with another contender for his adored child's affection now that he and Elsa could see eye to eye, with no more secret concealment to wedge a glacial divide in her beloved family's harmony.

"Where is my dashing hero of yesteryear, who swept that young Princess into the arms of love that would last to all eternity in the holy bonds of matrimony?" Still just as freshly stunning as she was all those years ago in Agdar's besotted eyes, Idun wraps her arms around her love and pets her agitated man's anxious, frost covered moustache and brow with her fearless warm touch. She successfully begins to defrost him from so bluntly and decisively denying Elsa her young man in her first – and most probably her last, if her mother was any judge of Elsa's heart— foray into romance, for all its peaks and pitfalls, and everlasting rewards.

"Won't you allow our bright, intelligent, and amazing daughter to have that same wonderful chance to choose her own deep abiding love, to steer her own ship on the vast ocean of life under her own steam, my darling?" Idun whispers on Agdar's cool cheek, breathing hotly against his clammy pale skin in the nautical allusion she knew he would appreciate.

"The wonderful chance to choose? A ship on the vast ocean, hmm…" Norway's King's startlingly pale blue eyes begin to normalize as his beautiful Queen, in pacifying his anger and jealous fatherly denial, had unintentionally given birth to a new idea for her perspicacious husband to cleverly clutch onto.

"Vise Admiral Westergaard!" In his no-nonsense, serious baritone, King Agdar suddenly harkens behind his shoulder to a startled unsuspecting redhead where Hans had been staunchly standing behind an outwardly nervous, wringing hands Elsa. Undaunted, Hans was brave in his compassion for her enough to have his stabilizing warm hand placed on her distraught shoulders for support, despite her father's demoralizing icy glare back at him.

"Admiral Bernadotte!" Responding in naval titled kind, lightly saluting the leader of the Sjoforsvaret he had sworn his allegiance to, Hans trots up to King Agdar's commanding call. His hands leave Elsa's trembling shoulders with a lasting warm squeeze to face her wrathful parent who may still choose to strike him down with one icy blast if he says the wrong thing.

 _Most likely not. Not seriously. Really, I do not believe King Agdar would… Though I am not certain that I would not have that adverse a reaction in such a situation…_

A breathless Hans braces his raging mind that was pondering to a detached level as he boldly steps forward while the Ice King emerges from the stable stall, definitely calmer than when he went in, to his Queen's credit.

Hans takes a deep breath, ready to face any questions or punishment as he stands before the vehemently frowning Ice King's purview with all his hope full of love and devotion for the man's exceptional daughter carrying him to stand there.

"I have been made aware that you are about to be reinstated here in your kingdom by your Father, King Herbert of Denmark's Royal House. Do I also understand correctly that you will continue to yet pledge your allegiance to my own Sjoforsvaret, and not the Søværnet of your own kingdom's empire?" Agdar poses this uncanny question to Hans as the Arendelle King pulls away from his quizzical wife's fondling embrace to address his currently second-in-line member of his naval command.

"Without a second thought, your Majesty. I will endeavor, as your Vise Admiral, to fulfill whatever redoubtable loyal capacity I may serve to your – _and Queen Elsa's_ – proud Navy." Dutifully puffing up with male pride in his lifelong role as a naval officer, Hans shares a smile with a lovelorn Elsa, who always admired a man in uniform, especially one who cut so dashing a figure as Prince Hans Westergaard.

"Ahem." Clearing his throat, King Agdar sees how this young Westergaard was looking at Elsa, much the same hungry way he himself once gazed at his Idun before he had yet claimed her as his own, but was dreaming of it in every waking hour.

That youthful yearning's memory propels Papa Agdar to cement his spontaneous decision concerning Elsa's young suitor, once and for all.

"What's this I hear, my boy? You prefer the Sjoforsvaret to our own Søværnet?" King Herbert had overheard Hans' strident last statement in the young prince's private conversation with King Agdar.

After introducing King Friedrich and Czar Nicholas to farmhand Old Ned, and the trio of equestrian enthusiasts had gone into the weeds of horse breeding, from hard tack shoeing of purebreds to the proper hull-less corn feed to promote tensile muscle strength, Herbert left the other two monarchs to hash that out in the stable rear.

The Danish King found it all far less diverting than his youngest son attending to the beauteous Queen Elsa and his soon to be in-laws.

"Well…yes…Father…I…had pledged my service to Queen Elsa during a dramatically dangerous period for her nation and she was munificent enough to bestow upon me the high honor of Kommander of her fine Sjoforsvaret vessel." Hans looks at Elsa with the beautiful smile that showed his gratitude to her for her trust way back then. "And afterwards, Admiral Bernadotte elevated this lowly sailor such as I, to the high office of Vise Admiral in our deployment against a violent deadly threat to all of Norway. I must convey to you, Father, my utmost respect for our northern neighbor in the Sjoforsvaret, and my reverence for its leaders as well. I have been blessed and honored to humbly serve alongside such an accomplished naval force that displayed ultimate courage in the face of disaster and imminent danger." In his eloquence, with a nod Hans shows his paramount respect to the heroic, unsung self-sacrificing men of the Norwegian Navy he had served with on board the HmNoS Gler in their deadly struggle with that fierce and hideous sea monster the wicked Captain Jol had become.

Through his words and the depth of deference behind his son's eyes, King Herbert comprehended Hans' great care and gratitude of duty to Elsa's naval forces.

"Of course, King Herbert, now that he is again a Prince of your naval based kingdom, I will release Prince Hans from my Sjoforsvaret so he can serve his King- namely you, his father- and country here to spend time again in Denmark's Søværnet, the country of his birth." King Agdar again sends Idun and Elsa into a state of confusion with Hans as the back-and-forth bouncing kickball of the Ice King's sly, conniving invention.

"I will not hear of it, man! My Hans will be only too happy to continue to serve in your Sjoforsvaret under yourself and Queen Elsa's command, for however long you wish it! That will be only right and honorable for my youngest child to begin to be such a vital member of your Navy, in conjunction with having an integral future role in your Royal household for many years to come." King Herbert says with a glint and a wink at Elsa behind her father and Hans' backs.

"How right you are, King Herbert. Your son, Prince Hans, as my new Vise Admiral, has potentially vast duties in the service of my Sjoforsvaret. I believe I will be relying heavily on his sagacity to act as my personal official liaison to the Navy, as I must, as Admiral, and head of the government of land and sea, become engaged with reacquainting myself with my nation after my enforced five-year absence." There Agdar pauses to give an astounded Hans a trusting nod.

Prince Hans nods back, his eyebrows quirked and confused by all these important duties suddenly offered him by the Arendelle King.

"There's much service to be done to my ever evolving maritime fleet in this oncoming Industrial Age of modern technology. Your son has impressed me with his command of the sailors and has proven himself invaluable of the study of modern recent invention for steamships and its newly developed weaponry." King Agdar strokes his ginger mustache as he talks about essential naval matters.

"Yes, King Agdar! They had dubbed the First Industrial Revolution in the years between 1760 - 1840. But the Second Industrial Revolution, that is now to be classified as the Technological Revolution, is going to a rapid phase of industrialization that you and I both foresee after this decade's punctuated slow down of new inventions." Out of nowhere, Prince Lars, the resident Southern Isles brainiac chirps in to enjoy conversing with someone else who seemed just as enthused about this enlightened era of history for all machinery and technologies that was making this second half of the century they just ventured into an exciting one to be embarking upon.

"Thank you, Lars. Do continue, Agdar." King Herbert resists rolling his eyes and merely smirks at how egg-headed his spectacle-wearing third son could drift off on tangents of his vast knowledge. The Danish King leans against Prince Lars' front suit jacket shoulder with all its cluttered gadgets and messy doodads tucked in every pocket.

"Therefore, I have intention for my Vise Admiral to inspect my fleet's multiple ships in modernizing efficiency across our trade route from the Far East to the Americas. Your Prince Hans' forward-thinking clever strategy and hands-on skill onboard a ship makes him the ideal young officer for the job, with my utter trust and given authority to serve that purpose of refitting my Navy in my stead, and proudly represent my Crown." Agdar wraps up his lofty speech with a smile beneath his ginger moustache that had Idun's back up immediately.

Though Elsa and Hans were both pleased by Agdar's accolades and claims of utmost trust showered upon his young Vise Admiral, Idun knew her clever man well enough to see where this was all going.

And she also recognized there was little she could do about it – for the time being.

"Such an honor, Hans! Recognized as Vise Admiral in delegated charge effectively of an entire fleet at such a young age! But don't let that all that duty and prestige keep you out on the high seas and away from wedded bliss too long, my boy. Our Elsie is much more preferable to any sailor's fantasy of mermaid sirens." King Herbert pats Elsa's pale cheek after he clasps her hands into Hans', pressing them together with new pride for the one son he never associated with that word before.

But the lovely girl with even lovelier soul had taught him life lessons that the King had taken to heart.

"Yes, yes, Lars. We're going now." Herbert answers the son he was leaning against as Lars, who, after inspecting his timepiece watch on its chain to his overstuffed vest, whispers something in his father's ear.

"If you will excuse me, there is a knighthood ceremony for your husband Prince Eugene to take place in my throne room that I invite for you all to attend, now that your precious jewel of a child and my youngest scapegrace are about to bring our two families together in marriage." King Herbert felt lighter than a schoolboy when he kisses Elsa's hands with his leathery weatherworn lips. Prince Lars has to keep up keep up pace with his energized parent as they leave the Ladegården.

"The marriage…" Looking from expectant face to face of his wife, his daughter, and her fiancé in question, King Agdar's mumbled repeat of his Danish equal's parting words weighed heavily on him before he makes another statement.

"Yes, Elsa. This is your time to choose. Please forgive your overwrought Papa for doubting your decision and resolve." Agdar looks to Elsa with caring and kindness as he requests her pardon.

"I can give my best advice, but your mother is correct, my Snow Angel. This is ultimately your choice." The King turns to Elsa, capturing both of her chilly hands within his own cool ones.

"I realize that you have been ruling Queen of our great nation for over two years now, making just and valid decisions as coronated head of it. Although, I, as Admiral, still have a say in some quarters." Elsa's father contemplates in a low murmur, not yet lifting his eyes again meet any of theirs.

"In your capacity as Queen, I cannot – _and desire to not_ – curb your fundamental right to choose whatever path and whomever you decide to walk with on it, under God's forbearing laws." After Idun's urging him for benevolence before, Agdar had significantly calmed down from the ice's brink to be able to deliver this avowal sanely.

"Of what I have learned from Anna and Minister Kai of this young Dane, I have just cause to distrust his motives. But your Mother is right, as usual. Redemption is not for us to judge, but for the Lord. Therefore, I am bound by our faith to forgive Prince Hans his past wrongdoing since he professes he has truly repented, and appears to be authentic in that act of contrition." Agdar states and bows his head to his Queen's virtuous insight on the holy moral matter.

"However –"

"He is beyond doubt penitent, Papa! I trust my Hans with my life!" Elsa cries her own faith in her fiancé's trustworthiness and remorseful sincerity.

"Since you have come to be so fond of him, and he has proclaimed to be that of you along your extensive and arduous journey together, Elsa, I will relent to this." For one shining moment Elsa looks ecstatic when she heard the word 'relent'.

Although, clever wordsmith himself Hans was a little more wary to grow as excited so quickly without hearing the rest of the King's whole speech through.

"Prince Hans, you may ask to marry my Elsa –" As the Arendelle King capitulates this, Elsa squeaks in delight, grins broadly and gleefully claps her hands together, able to breathe at last in relief. The elated young woman hugs a dazed, smiling Hans around his neck, feeling her spirit soar on the wings of happy anticipation.

Idun looks to her shrugging contented sister Arianna, with a fair amount of worry behind her own motherly eyes at this all being too easy.

"– However, I will only give you my blessing after you complete your full naval tour duty in the Sjoforsvaret, and prove your worth and loyalty to the Crown and country of Norway you will be inducted to as my most elite officer."

The other shoe drops.

As well the heart sinking in Elsa's struck cold chest as she begins to shake her head in disbelief at how happy her Papa had made her one moment, and the next it came crashing down around her ringing ears.

"But Papa! A full naval tour is two years!" Elsa had learned enough of her Navy's practices that Agdar had drilled into her since an early age when she was preparing to be head someday of their fleet, to realize the lengthiness of a full tour.

"Time enough for your Danish Prince to pledge his allegiance to our nation. And prove himself to you." The King coolly logics out, his eyes meeting Idun's with a final firm resolve that told her he would not budge from this spot.

"If your love is as strong as the two of you have admitted, then this small passage of time will be of little test to its longevity." Agdar concludes, believing he was being widely generous to his child to not simply renounce the engagement. He simply wanted her not to rush into such a serious undertaking without giving it much thought.

Besides, this Prince Hans' ability to be installed into their country, as Queen Elsa's Prince Consort, would certainly involve serving in their nation's essential naval service for a protracted spread of time.

So why not require him to serve their military forces first? And in so doing, give Elsa the chance to change her mind, forget all about him, and come to her senses about marrying this Dane, after a two-year stint.

"Mama! It's too long!" A devastated Elsa whispers in Idun's dark brown hair as she presses her teary eyes against her mother's sympathetic shoulder.

But Idun could see that dug-in heels Papa would stubbornly stick to his plan because he considered it immensely fair and reasonable to all parties.

"After his tour of duty is complete, and my Vise Admiral had earned his title and a place of honor in our kingdom, if you still both wish to marry, I will not deny you my blessing as King of Arendelle, Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret – and your devoted father." Seeing Elsa's tears. Agdar feels the pang of his little girl's heartbreak at this enforced delay as he relents to the desulatory marriage arrangement, no matter his view on the Danes in general, and wariness of this 'reformed' criminal in particular.

But Agdar's protective nature would not yield his conviction that his precious snowflake of a child was not yet ready for the biggest step of her young life. He believed Elsa was still the fragile creature who needed training and time in all areas, especially this absolute one where there was no going back.

"But, Papa! I need him! I don't want to wait to marry him!" This fragile snowflower fights back as Elsa defiantly throws herself into her father's arms in desperation.

"Elsa, obey your Papa, now. I will not waver in my decision on this matter." Agdar, though genuinely affected by his daughter's outburst, remains resolute in keeping the pair separated.

"Papa! No! You can't do this—!" Elsa pulls pleadingly on his jacket, tears filling her large eyes as she conceptualizes her father's legitimate right in this Victorian age to implement this postponement to her nuptials to her one true love.

"Elsa."

With one mere gentle calling, the object of her affection, Hans, gains the distraught Ice Queen's full and complete attention, as he holds out his hand towards her, beckoning her with a beseeching smile.

She turns immediately towards him, running straight from her Papa's embrace into Hans' arms. The titian haired Prince gathers her in his tender touch, kissing the top of her head soothingly to calm her cold tears into a tepid smile.

Agdar moves to separate them, but Idun quickly and silently puts a restraining hand on his arm, with a sad shake of her head. With a strained sigh, the Arendelle King complies to his assertive wife's wishes and merely scrutinizes the pair from afar.

"Hans! Don't do this! I don't want to wait! I want to be near you! Let me be near you!" Elsa clings to him, burying her face in his chest.

"Elsa, let me do this for you. Let me prove I can become the man worthy of your love." Hans tries to gain her smile, caressing a bare hand over her beautiful features that wept for him.

"You've already done that, over and over! You don't need to prove anything to me or anyone! I want us to be together now! Can't you see?" Elsa never comprehended her own desperate need to be so utterly wrapped in the warmth of love until she experienced Hans Westergaard's personal touch so intimately.

"I would do anything for you—walk through fire for you, go to the ends of the earth…die for you—" Hans waxes a bit poetic in his romantic ramblings, but he meant each dramatic phrase sincerely.

"I don't want you to!" Elsa cuts him off angrily, her exotic blue eyes flaring at that last pledge she could not live with. _If you die, I would die..._

Hans smiles ruefully, yet lovingly down at her. "It's not at the top of my list either, but…that doesn't change the fact that I would."

Even Elsa, so overwrought at this moment, can't help but smile through her tears at his valiant attempt to lighten the mood.

He pulls her away from his chest, lifting her chin so she would look him in the eye. "My love, do you doubt my constancy for you? Or is it your love for me that you aren't so sure of? Understandably so." He asks without an ounce of bitterness.

"Hans! How can you say that?! You know I'll never, never stop loving you!" Elsa chides him, furrowing her brows at his words.

He smiles, knowing his imminent victory. "And my love for you is everlasting, _min kære_ …" (my darling) He pulls her to him again, nuzzling his pointy nose into her supple neck.

"If we must do this…" Hans interrupts his affectionate inflections to pause to glance over to King Agdar, hoping against hope he'd see relenting in the monarch's steely eyes.

Yet Hans knew the father's deep love and protection for his daughter wouldn't allow their union's consummation so easily.

Agdar, for his part, is moved by the wisdom he's now seeing in his Vise Admiral, but still nods once, silently to Hans, acknowledging he will not back down.

"…Elsa, we will prevail, together. No matter what you say, I know you deserve so much more than I. So I must do everything acceptably right—in your father's eyes, in your eyes." Hans lovingly runs a soft hand over Elsa's closed tearful eyes.

"Your Majesty, I fully understand your concerns and I respect you for them, Admiral Bernadotte." Hans turns his head to address King Agdar. "I would most likely do the same if I were in your position."

Agdar capitulates a curt nod of approval at the sage words of the young officer who would be his Navy's new right-hand man. Hans chuckles mirthlessly at himself at all of this fortuitous good fortune of prestigious power and high position being handed to him on a silver platter he once fantasized of. But now those ambitious dreams and lofty titles felt so trivial and unimportant compared to securing the love of the perfect, elegant and unrivaled beauty—inside and out—that he desired more, to spend the rest of his life with.

Idun squeezes Agdar's arm a bit tighter with a small smile at the humor of the handsome boy Elsa had chosen, pulling her reluctant King to take a step back from the young pair to give them some space to say what must be said.

"But Elsa, please know this time apart won't change anything between us—I would wait more than a thousand lifetimes for you." Hans embraces Elsa even tighter in his arms, enveloping her as if he never wanted to let her go. "No matter how long or how far we are apart, I will always love you with as much passion as I feel for you in this moment. Elsa…I am yours and yours alone…eternally." He kisses her hands, and then turns them to kiss her palms as well.

"I am and forever will be entirely devoted to you and your happiness. Allow me to do this for us—for our future together. Trust in me, my Snowflake." Hans proves his fervor for her as he unashamedly drinks in her eyes as if they were the only two in the room…

* * *

Though it took every last ounce of Agdar's restraint to hold back from breaking up his Vise Admiral's entrancement with his daughter, the Ice King lets his wife hinder him from putting his foot down. Probably because, with Prince Hans compliance to be ordered off shore to serve in his Navy for a full tour, Agdar felt he had been the one to win the day.

Back home in the warm bosom of her reunited family, Elsa would be free from this Dane's influence and would no doubt come back to her senses before the two years were up.

After all, a young man's fervent kisses and zealous touches made this sort of intoxication appealing to any girl. But Agdar had deemed his young Snow Angel wasn't really ready for this level of commitment yet, it was all just a passing fling she'd get over once they were back in Arendelle and back into the swing of proper castle life.

Or maybe it was he who wasn't ready to quite give his little girl up yet to the care of another man…

A young man whose all-encompassing green eyes were shining even more now with the hope for a someday when his Snowflake would be rightfully and properly permitted to be his.

Hans turns to thank her father for this chance in the future to be together with his daughter.

"It will be my honor, Sir, to serve under you and your country and your Navy to the best of my abilities, and under your daughter – whom I vow to lay my life down to protect with distinction and uphold the virtue of her honor with every last breath in me." Hans bows his head to King Agdar, who was impressed by this young officer's responsible vow as Hans swoops down to kneel at both Agdar and Elsa's feet.

"Hans, you must write me every day—" Elsa begins to instruct her betrothed for at least some form of communication that would sustain them in between his visits, when Hans interjects.

" **Twice** a day." The hopelessly romantic young man, who wanted to doubly please his beloved, says in a mellow tone with adoring heavy lidded eyes.

Elsa smiles in elation at her darling's sweetness "— _Twice a day_ , to tell me what you're doing and how you are coping in between your visits on shoreleave to Arendelle Castle—"

But the platinum blonde is interrupted again by a less syrupy voice who throws ice cold water on the couple's parade.

"No contact, no communication whatsoever in this trial interim." King Agdar makes the hard edict that has Elsa shrink back from her father in horror.

"Agdar! That's too harsh. Surely we can allow them a letter or two and the odd visit—" Queen Idun tries to ply her wheedling, but her husband's mind was set here on this point.

"The total lack of contact being apart from one another will prove absolutely if their devotion to one another is genuine. And not only a passing fancy with flirtations found in far too many romantic missives written full of meaningless sweet nothings. I myself have witnessed many a sailor fritter them away to his sweetie back home, whilst in reality, he had little attachment to the poor damsel hanging on his every loose word. No, I am decided on this point, Idun, and must insist. No letters, no meetings. Those have the tendency to lead to trouble far worse for the urgency of parting again soon for a young man and his sweetheart." As a worldly man having spent many years with experienced sailors who bragged of a girl in every port awaiting their return, Agdar had seen more immoral behavior between time-pressed couples that had irreconcilable consequences than he wished to explain to either lady present.

But as a fellow naval officer and lifelong seaman, his Vise Admiral perceived his drift and acted accordingly.

"Your father is right, Elsa. This is for the best. You will see that my love for you is as unwavering as the sunrise upon each dawn's horizon. Wherever the ocean waves take me, so travels my constancy for you, Elsa. No amount of ink, nor reams of paper could ever express my indescribable sentiment for you, anyway, _min_ _kære_." Hans reassures the trembling girl as he presses his warm forehead to her cool hand.

"And I will wait for **you** forever. My love for you is as endless as the stars in the sky, _min_ _elskade_." Elsa whispers in lyrical response, uncharacteristically outwardly sentimental and unafraid to show her emotion before her parents, to prove her own unchanging heart to her obstinate Papa concerning her Hans.

With both hands, Elsa caresses Hans' soft red sideburns that she so adored, holding both sides of his face, to bestow a chaste but meaningful kiss to his forehead. She knew in that moment, undeniably—she could not love him more. "Remember, I am yours—now and forever."

Agdar's strict sensibilities of the day were displeased by his daughter' bold outward expression of affection for this young rascal. But as Hans was apparently enjoying the Queen of Norway's lavish attention where he was vulnerably subservient, kneeling at her feet on the stable ground floor at his love's whim, Agdar remained silent.

Queen Idun appreciated how difficult this transition, from one and only protector and hero in his child's life to having a surpassing rival, was for her stubborn husband. She was proud of the way he was beginning to deal with the new and distressing thought of being replaced by this Danish upstart he did not entirely trust—enough to agree to Elsa's marriage in the future to him…

Of course, the time frame was ages too slow for Idun's taste. But it was a start in her Agdar's slow road to acceptance of having both his daughters married off and settled, leaving him with no little child to defend and indulge and protect in his dutiful role as conscientious authority figure in their close-knit household.

 _Maybe I'll have to work on that, too_ …

The thirty-nine year young Queen with the shining dark brown hair and bewitching indigo eyes wraps a familiar arm around the waist of her at times bloody-minded, self-righteously stiff-necked, gloriously gorgeous mate who was awkwardly wincing at Elsa and Hans' poignant love scene.

Queen Idun knew this new scenario ahead was going to be a rough one for the bullheaded stubborn man to become accustomed to.

But his very ability to stomach his Elsa and Prince Hans – by now standing with his arms protectively locked around the blonde beauty – in a few more awkward moments of time embracing, was strenuous on his paternal bent. It was only exacerbated by Agdar's natural dislike of anyone from the Southern Isles lineage to cross his daughters' path.

"Come, Elsa. The King's dinner party awaits. And then afterwards, we can prepare to go home." Agdar interrupts the couple's embrace with the terse order and chilled hands on his pale child's shoulder. The King extends out his own more suitable arm rather than her indulgent young man's.

"Yes, Papa." Elsa, her senses a contradiction of stops and starts, looks forlornly over her shoulder to the way the man she was unafraid to admit she was madly in love with gazing back at her with a long-suffering, good-natured shrug. Then with a soft sigh, Hans follows, with Elsa on King Agdar's arm.

The remaining Queen of Arendelle, Idun, looks at Hans with sympathetic eyes as he gentlemanly offers her his empty arm and they follow Elsa and Agdar's lead out of the Ladegården.

"He is simply testing you, Hans, sending you off for so long on a worldly, tempting journey in the Navy. He is also counting on Elsa to forget you during that time. I know." Idun says with a cynically shrewd smile up at the tall redhead, who seems to slightly tense at such a suggestion.

"Don't worry, my dear. Elsa's heart is yours and always will be. Never doubt that." With her words and kind motherly squeeze on his arm, Hans visibly relaxes again.

"He is simply testing you, Hans, sending you off for so long on a worldly, tempting journey in the Navy. He is also counting on Elsa to forget you during that time. I know." Idun says with a cynically shrewd smile up at the tall redhead, whose body seems to slightly tense at such a suggestion.

"Don't worry, my dear. Elsa's heart is yours and always will be. Never doubt that." With her words and kind motherly squeeze on his arm, Hans visibly relaxes again.

"And my King's ice will eventually melt if we keep our light of love warm. Just give it time, little Prince." Queen Idun whispers to the handsome Southern Isles son her daughter had secured the heart of.

"I will, your Majesty. On my honor, I promise to remain true to her. There **could** never be anyone but her for me." Hans pledges to Elsa's mother, wearing his heart on his sleeve for his icy maiden.

"Good boy." Idun smiles, patting his arm, as certain of the young man's fidelity as her stubborn mate was unsure of Hans.

"Are you coming, Friedrich? You _may_ want to see your son-in-law being honored by the King." Idun says in her lilting voice as she passes by her brother-in-law, where King Friedrich was still giddily discussing horse tackle with the stable manager.

Queen Idun smiles to her frustrated big sister waiting for her own love, to come around to sense now, remembering how Arianna tried to push her to wed Prince Anders all those years ago.

As gentlemanly Hans walks Elsa's mother out of the stables towards the Danish Castle kingdom she herself almost married into a quarter-century ago, Idun chuckles at the grand irony of it all.

 _God in His heaven must be laughing up there…_

 _What goes around, comes around, doesn't it, my love?_

The petite Queen of Norway muses to herself with a giggle as she follows her once again standing tall and powerful King whom she would have to try to teach a little more every day to welcome this Dane she herself had embraced, into his heart **and** his home someday.

* * *

 _min kære -_ _'my darling' in Danish_

 _min elskade -_ 'my beloved' in Norwegian

 _Min älskare_ \- 'my lover' in Swedish

* * *

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Frozen friends!

Luck 'o the Irish! Hans and his 'Wild Norwegian Rose' Elsa have announced their engagement to the King! ^0^ AHHH!

This wrap-up chapter once again has extended too long, so there will be yet one more installment before the grand finale. (I know this dragging out extra chapters is getting tiresome! Sorry;)

Did you enjoy this one revolving around Hans and Elsa's all important BETROTHAL being revealed to her family?

Ka-boom! *#&#$ ! It wasn't a lucky day for our handsome prince of the Southern Isles! Poor Hans tried to break it to King Agdar as tactfully as possible, but circumstances got in the way. The Ice King took it rather badly! -0-

Please don't get too angry with King Agdar! ^0^ He's just acting like the overprotective father who loves his little girls, who relied on him all their lives, soooo much! And with all he's gleaned from his friend Kai and along the journey, Anna, who were eye witnesses of Hans' former behavior, who can blame him for being resolute about this Danish Prince?

The road to true love never runs smoothly though, with Papa Agdar throwing a wrench in the works! But at least he did not off-handedly ban their wedding, instead only demanding Hans serve a tour in the Navy before he'll let Elsa tie the knot with the handsome Dane. Protective Papa King Agdar's having a rougher time with it than Anna now! (He's a ginger too!) Who knows? Feisty rebel Anna may be the one to bridge the lonely gap between Elsa and her young Naval officer…Ah, the irony of it all…

So enters our plotline to Book 3, about Helsa's separation and longing for one another to eventually achieve wedded bliss! Can't think of a couple who's worked harder for it! ^-^

So hang on for one more long epilogue to come before we give Book 2 here in the Southern Isles a proper send-off!

Thanks for reading, Frozen friends! Please drop me a review of what you thought about the Arendelle family kafuffle over Elsa's betrothal to 'that Red'!

God bless you!

And have a HAPPY ST. P'S !

Find some four leaf clovers and good-lookin' leprechauns named Flynnigan out there today!

Top 'o the morning to ye!

Love, HarukaKou


	30. Chapter 30 - Save the Last Dance for Me

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Chapter 30**

 **"Save the Last Dance for Me"**

Princess Anna was having the time of her life.

As the joyful afternoon wore on, Anna had hardly expected that her first visit to the Danish Southern Isles would turn out to be so much fun. Well, at least not for a long time, ever since that momentary insanity when she imagined she was going to wed Prince Hans Westergaard.

 _Well, you can have him, Elsa!_

Sure, she had attended some fun events in Arendelle before, but this garden party was full of more sights and sounds than Anna could ever have dreamed of. After seriously chowing down on the seafood, she had been helping the little Danish kids experience their first ride on her _'taxi service'_ flying reindeer and the Snow Queen's white magic horses alongside her true love, Kristoff.

All while she and her hunky man were singing duets across the sky to melodies that Rapunzel's friend Hookhand was playing on the piano that he and his silver claw had intimidated the hired musician to relinquish earlier.

Even the Danish princes that Anna thought were so stuck up and nasty before were now, at their wives' assertive requests, attending to their little girls, getting them strapped safely to the exciting flying rangifer and equestrian rides.

Of all the Southern Isles princes spoiling their children, Kristoff was especially surprised how warm and doting a daddy that smarmy, tall, dark and handsome moustached Prince Didrik was to his group of five young daughters, ranging from ages **five to fourteen**. The tall man was personally loading each of his little girls onto the thrilling rides like a caring, good father should.

The honest Ice Harvester could not deny being impressed by the dapper prince's patient parenting skills as he took time out for each of his children without complaint.

"Maybe there's hope for me yet when it comes to rearing bouncing little babes. Eh, Muscles?" Surveying the debonair charmer's bonding with his multiple female children from afar, Eugene recognized a fellow ne'er-do-well who was ' _not too bad with the ladies_ '.

This 'wolf' amidst the fold leans back with crossed arms against the hedge maze row as Eugene had been standing on the sidelines all afternoon, viewing the Westergaard clan and their guests having an enjoyable outing and picnic for the King's birthday.

"Eugene! Where have you been?! We could use a low tenor over here to teach these girls how the tempo of this song goes. You've heard the Snuggly Duckling gang doing the number often. I know you know it. Please come help us practice." Rapunzel had conspired with the Southern Isles' Princess wives and had been arranging for their children to sing a special _'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow_ ' tribute for the King at the close of the fête's big finale.

"No can do, Sunshine. Remember, _I don't sing_." Eugene adamantly shakes his head in the negative to his pushy Prussian Princess after exchanging a macho, incredulous look with Prince Mattias and Prince Peiter who had been sitting in amused audience to their songful children's impromptu recital. The black jacket with tails had already long been carelessly slung over his shoulder as the good-looking scalawag saunters up to his demanding, cheeky bride.

"Besides, Bruiser promised me a free check-up on my bullet ridden arm. They must've given me some kind of knockout mickey finn, because my head went all woozy after that friendly drink of - _ahem_ – water they gave me with that a-nes-the-si-a medicine stuff. And the next thing I knew, they'd gone and stuck me with this." Eugene draws up the sleeve of his borrowed silk shirt to show his brawny arm to her.

At her slightly drunken husband displaying so much skin, Rapunzel gives an embarrassed smile to a raised brow Princess Adelaide and Prince Jurgen who had been teaching his two older twin girls singing the chorus in G major, as well as how to tie a sailor's knot to harness Sven and his saddle while they were practicing.

The Princess of Corona almost burst out in merry laughter at the funny comic caricature of her handsome guy in a less than flattering tattoo art of himself—elongated nose and all—holding his signature frying pan, with a name none too endearing etched on it as moniker.

"Not only did your questionable _friends_ work on the wrong arm, and **_NOT_ ** get my nose right - _yet again_ \- they spelled my _previous_ occupation incorrectly!" Flynn Rider indignantly complains of his maltreatment by the pair of medically inclined Snuggly Duckling boys along with a few of their more sadistic, mean and scary compadres who stuck their hands in the tattoo tent to poke a little fun at their favorite punching bag's expense.

"Hee, hee. _'_ _Rapunzel's_ _ **Theif** '_?" Rapunzel must stifle her chuckle the closer she examines Eugene's bared upper bicep with the comedic tattoo and the title encased in a frying pan in the cartoon's hand.

"But…at least they got the perfect stubble on your handsome chiseled jaw right." The young wife tries to placate as she runs her hand across her husband's prized chin, then gently along his again maligned manly muscles.

"Ouchy!" But Eugene's high pitched feminine whine at Pascal's investigative touch causes Prince Franz, wandering over, to scoff in a hearty laugh.

"Stop acting like a little girl, man! These kids of my brothers have more guts than you! Where's your male pride?" The strapping foreign adventurer of the Danish Princes slaps Eugene on his freshly etched tattooed arm's shoulder, causing the poor shrieking man to shrink back in exploding gasps of little squeals of pain.

"I lost it, along with my smolder, a long time ago." Eugene cannot help from being sarcastically humorous as he struggles for breath to gasp this out in his wife's sympathetic arms.

"Hmph! They do this all the time to prove their manly dominance in the Yaka tribes of the Congo. Take a look at these, Boy! And I have more where they came from!" Prince Franz had lived in the wilds of Africa enough to leave Victorian custom behind and challenge Eugene with his plethora of dark, bold tatoos of lions and gorillas and cheetah emblazoned across his masculine chest as he pulls his vest and shirt open to display his wares to Eugene.

"I did **not** need to see that." Deadpan and feeling bilious Eugene was not certain if his inebriated, anesthetized eyes were playing tricks on him with the demigod-like heroic depictions scrawled across Franz' amply endowed, muscular bod seeming to dance and point at him with a laugh.

Eugene closes his eyes and shakes his head, trying to clear his muddled senses of this delirium.

"Eugene! Please, come on! Sing for me!" Rapunzel beckons him yet again to join in with the girlish chorus led by Anna and Princesses Elisabeth and Lujza.

On her shoulder, Pascal sticks his long tongue out at Eugene when the woozy thief does not respond in the right mode immediately.

"Is coming to a lady's rescue not part and parcel of becoming an honored knight of this realm, _Sir_ Eugene?" With a teasing glint in his shocking blue eyes, Prince Ivers snobbishly puts in his two cents as he passes by with a besotted Princess Marguerite hanging on his arm.

The couple had been accompanying an excited Lukas around the carnival-like festival as the sweet boy stops to assertively help his friend Anna show the other kids how to properly ride the airborne menagerie.

But it was Attila's frying pan, full of freshly made fruit filled hot fritters still sizzling, suddenly hanging over Eugene's head that meant business. Especially when it was backed up by no-nonsense Cassandra's severe glare and real dagger eyes threatening to rain down brown sugar and hot glaze over his freshly washed coif.

So Eugene does what every honest self-respecting man would do in such a situation.

He gives in.

"'For he's a jolly good fellow. For he's a jolly old fellow. For he's a jolly old _curmudgeon—!"_ Under melting point threat, Flynn was stuck between a hot frying pan wielding madwoman and a readily retractable tongued hostile lizard on his wife's pleading shoulder. But he still could not deny himself a waggish tease.

Eugene joins in a pleasant tune's melody. But not without a few minor lyric revisions along the way that had the children all befuddled, Rapunzel rolling her green eyes to the heavens, and Anna laughing outright at how funny cousin Eugene could be.

"Sing it right, Fitzherbert. Or else the boys and I might have to take you for _another_ _bath_." Toughie Cassandra threatens Flynn in between where her flat semitone was co-opted to sing in harmony with the second set of teenagers. Half of which turn their drooling features from Anna's blond beefy honk across the way to this naughty, could-be-wicked-and-wouldn't (every now and then), mysteriously devilish new 'uncle' with those languid, unintentionally come hither eyes.

"And so say all of us!" With an inviting smile to his crestfallen woman who had to lean against one of the hedges in the Beech Garden when her morning sickness struck once again, Eugene finishes in perfect pitch and rhythm the sappy tune for their concert.

With a loud crescendo, the pianist in Hookhand had been thumping on the piano keys in protest of Flynn's maddening off time performance that was nonconforming with his stellar musical number.

Eugene gives him a toothy grin as he delivers the final notes to perfection.

"Thank you, Eugene." But it was music in Rapunzel's ears, the madly in love young woman certain that her man would always eventually come around to being her Knight in shining armor.

Eventually.

"I think our twins like to hear you singing, too." She melts into her husband's loving embrace as her pregnant pains lesson.

The more vocally skilled older girls Kristoff had been training and the sweet noted younger ones Anna had taken under her in-flight wing just then join together with the awkward voiced t'weens that the Prussian Princess had been artistically trying to weave together.

Suddenly, they all begin to sing cohesively, to Kristoff, Anna, and Rapunzel's relief and delight.

The choir sings in rounds that melt together quite beautifully with Eugene and Kristoff and a few game Danish Princes even adding their deeper voices to the building joyful chorus.

As happy children fly across the skies on reindeer across Egeskov Chapel's church steeple, Olaf waves his carrot nose from where he and Marshmallow were ' _chillin'_ to sit back and listen to the child noisy festivities the little snowman was introducing his biggest brother to the wonders of.

"Great. Twins." Eugene distractedly looks down to see a pair of identical blonde haired girls about age five pull raspberry faces and squish their noses up at him quite rudely. The blasé man momentarily imagines himself having a double trouble dose of child-rearing himself dealing with lovely little ladies/twin terrors such as these in the not-too-distant future.

Though he never imagined himself a parent at all, never mind a good one, the once carefree playboy was becoming more and more ready to fully throw himself into being contented and secure in the family and home that he lacked as a child himself.

And Eugene Fitzherbert steels himself for the noisy pandemonium of joy and tears that children brought to the world, coming soon to a medical theatre near him.

With startled eyes, Kristoff joins Eugene's marvel of children to come as both men watch in wonder one braided pixie named Anna zip before them in mystified bewilderment.

 _ **WHOOSH**!_

She was hot on the trail of a runaway waif town child who had become more engrossed with catching Olaf's bright orange carrot nose across the garden by the church rather than flying.

"Kristly! I lost one of the orphans the nuns brought in!" In high spirits of the merry chase, Princess Anna calls out for her love to help roundup the energetic tiny girl hailing from the mission school she had visited earlier.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Like a bull in a China shop, Princess Anna races through the Beech and Fuchsia and even the pristinely groomed Renaissance gardens, like a madwoman. She accidentally smashes through the now defaced cardboard cutouts of the Punch and Judy puppet show that Fang had been running.

The swift legged ginger quickly overtakes the squirrelly little girly and scoops her up in a rounded pirouetted swirl before the toddler reaches a sticky pink mess Olaf or a more frightened of the under two foot tall child Marshmallow hiding behind the Chapel before she gets there.

"Gotcha! Reach for the sky, you little sweetie pie!" In her own rhyming sing-songy nature, Anna swings the toddler with the vivid yellow hair up high overhead into the air after the little sprightly, nameless waif had bolted from Flurru's back when her curious eyes watched Olaf cheerfully appear at the fete and re-cross the drawbridge.

Her toddling inquisitive eyes had traced the snowman happily chewing on a stick of pink-dyed spun sugar cotton candy and the little orphan girl had a childish hankering to tweak his bright orange carrot nose that the pink spun sugar was dangling upon.

"Is she okay?!" A crazed with anxiety, and cautiously feeling culpable and liable for any mishap to the children put under his bride's care, a huffing and puffing Kristoff had caught up to where Anna had the runaway toddler in her arms.

The baby wordlessly yawns big in Anna's arms, making the Arendelle Princess giggle in delight.

"That meant ' _Don't sweat the small stuff'_. We've got this under control. Right, sweetie?" Anna translates the tiny unnamed child's exhausted yawn to her husband as she had, in her mad dash, somehow had the swift presence of mind to have grabbed a stick of cotton candy from where Ulf the pantomime was spinning it by the street vendor.

"Go pay the pasty-face man for this, Kristly." Into her role as a good little wife, Anna directs her faithful out of breath mate to exchange a coin for the sweet treats she had purloined from the silent pantomime who was mimicking a call to the police direction.

"Oh, poor baby's tired. Let's sing her a lullaby while we get her back to the Sisters." Princess Lujza who was faster on her feet than would be expected by her shapely girth, having a few children of her own to chase after over the years, peers over Anna's shoulder.

She watches the effervescent young girl tuck the tiny child into her saddlebag like an Indian Mama with a thick canvas fabric wrap that Kristoff had tied around her to keep some of the little wriggle pants children close onboard to keep up safety standards during the in-flight ride.

Industrious hands-on Kristoff had devised the papoose-type sling to secure the smaller kids his Anna had been escorting upon their flying circus, just so no accidents happened.

Princess Lujza had instantly jumped on Sven to quickly land right beside an astonished Kristoff and Anna to lend her matronly assistance in the dicey matter.

"I like your ride, Bonito! (Handsome!)" The outwardly flirtatious woman pats Sven, who she had accosted, on the flank with one hand and Kristoff's reddened cheek with the other as he just returned from running around to pay Ulf the pantomime his due for the stolen cotton candy.

"Princess Anna! You are a natural with children! I bet you will have a brood of your own soon, if I'm any judge of this robust young fellow." Kristoff blinks at this boisterous royal princess' insinuation, coloring violently under Portuguese Princess Lujza's approving gaze as she looks him up and down and licks her rosy lips.

Kristoff wasn't sure she was outwardly being flirtatious with him, or simply was fond of the pink spun sugar treat he had purchased an extra one of for his sweet Anna and was holding for her.

"Now the right song to set the mood, _bela menina (_ pretty girl)." The Portuguese woman returned her attention Anna and the fussy small child wriggling and yawning incessantly in the ginger's arms after the hungry child devours the sweet cotton candy in a few seconds flat.

"Evening is a-falling, so rest your weary head, don't cry little baby, sleep tight in your bed." The Hispanic Princess sings her own children's favorite lullaby, prompting Anna to sing along with her the comforting words with an encouraging nod.

"The stars will shine so brightly, in the sky above. Hush now little darling, bundled up with love." Musically inclined Anna quickly picks up on the lovely, flowing melody that she sings to the little wayward toddler to calm her down as she and fearless Lujza soar on Sven low to the ground and slow only a few feet above the hedges.

The withdrawn, frightened child responds to Lujza and Anna's comforting song, soon opening her little arms wide up to embrace the late afternoon sky.

"I love you, Anna!" The heretofore mute baby repeats what Kristoff had said at take off as she snuggles her little face into Anna's sentimental warm chest.

"Aww…I love you, too." Anna hugs the little child with a sentimental smile down at Kristoff as they land on the ground again where he was waiting.

"Hug time!" Just then, Olaf comes running up and gives the giggling tiny child her first cold, warm hug when Kristoff easily lifts her and Anna to the ground from Sven's back.

Prince Peiter comes over to help Lujza down; he had with him a childless farmer and his wife, whom Peiter knew from his work in the Crown's Agriculture department. The middle-aged couple had become interested in adopting the vivacious, adorable toddler Anna's sunshine had touched, for yet one more happy ending to this phenomenal day.

Subsequently, most of the other curious children gather around Olaf, as the pleasant snowman was more than eager to hand out warm hugs to every one of them as he takes their names down to memory.

"Let's see... I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Margaret. I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Una. I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Lyn. I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Fenja, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Cicilia. I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Corrina. I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Kette…" The friendly snowman was only too happy to meet and greet one by one all twenty-two (Hermine's unborn babe yet to come) of Hans' nieces and give them an extra special hug after he introduces himself, quite repetitively.

"This may take a while." Crossing his manly arms, Kristoff drolly says as he and Anna stare in awe at their snow pea for a brain, snowy mountain for a heart, sociable snowman who did not know how to take shortcuts when it came to sharing love.

The tall mountain man hands Anna her stick of cotton candy, but not before Sven gets a nip off the top of the swirled sugary treat.

* * *

As the sun begins to set, the luncheon buffet and excitement of the carnival-like fete the Snuggly Duckling boys provided, along with Kristoff and Anna and their flying circus to entertain the children begins to wind down, King Herbert returns on Prince Kaleb's arm.

"I wish to thank everyone for participating in this wonderful party in honor of my birthday celebration that my many children have thrown for me here in these lovely, scenic gardens of our home. Egeskov has not seen such joy and happiness for far too many years and I thank you all for attending." King Herbert presides over the end of the ceremony as many bright smiles sparkle back at him across several hectares of land on boisterous sights and sounds of friendship and fun that were not permitted in his stoic kingdom for far too long.

"You have my deepest gratitude for giving me such a day." King Herbert gazes around the sea of descendents gathering around, his sons and their children and their wives all smiling up at him with more amiable affability passing between them than this family had seen in a lifetime here. "And now I officially declare this highly agreeable outdoor luncheon as clos—" Herbert was about to formally pronounce the party over when Rapunzel's small voice pipes up from the side lines.

"Not… exactly… Your Majesty. Ummm… Before we go in for dinner, there's one more special presentation your grandchildren have put together for your birthday party celebration, Sire." With a sincere smile, Princess Rapunzel nods to Pascal who pulls on a rope tied around the flying Sven's back midair as Kristoff uses his arrows in a stunning display of his Wind Whisperer skills at the Saami Longbow to precisely split apart another rope tying the net holding down to release a bevy of balloons.

Big Nose, Hilde and the Porcius sisters, along with Aged P, Gunther, Thor and Shorty had been blowing up balloons in all kinds of shapes with the Fattigskole missionary charity school children that the nuns had generously brought in to enjoy the sunny kid-friendly atmosphere when Mother Superior sent word of the festivity.

As the colorful ribbons, paper lanterns and newly invented vulcanized balloons filled with hydrogen touch the sunsetting sky, a chorus of beautiful voices begin to sing their birthday song Anna and Rapunzel had brainstormed as a salute to the old King.

King Herbert never imagined such a multitude of pretty little girls, from ages two to twenty, would all raise their voices the smiling faces together in his honor. And that young Lukas whom Herbert had been introduced to was there as well, participating as a boy soprano pitching in with the girls to sing for their before-unfriendly and unapproachable grandparent.

"For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow, the really best kind of friend! And so say all of us!" Anna's bright soprano joins Rapunzel's sweet tone leading the happy children, royal and plebian alike, all to lend their voices to the rousing song, first universally sung by all, then in the children's native Danish.

 _"For han er en af vor egne, for han er en af vor egne_

 _For han er en af vor egne , en rigtig guttermand_

 _En rigtig guttermand, en rigtig guttermand_

 _For han er en af vor egne, for han er en af vor egne_

 _For han er en af vor egne en rigtig guttermand!_

For the chorus' back up, mellow voiced Kristoff urges everyone from the Egeskov Royal guard to the servants and the Snuggly Duckling guys to harmonize their various tone colors to the congratulatory melody that the choir of young girls and boys from the convent school sweetly sing with the granddaughters of the Southern Isles in their Danish tongue to grandfather and King.

 _"Tillykke med fødselsdagen, bedstefar!"_ (Happy birthday, Grandfather!")

The children saying this well-wishing salutation all together as one makes the old man scan over the spate of fresh vibrant faces of his grandchildren and his sons and daughters-in-law all genuinely wishing him well. King Herbert could only smile with tears in his eyes at the wondrous legacy his Louise had left for him that he never took the time to realize the vast richness of before.

"That was truly beautiful, children. I have never had such a wonderful time before, on this day of new beginnings. I thank you all." King Herbert nods to each of his family members as he squeezes Rapunzel and Anna's hands in either of his pleased, weatherworn, large ones.

"Now, after this glorious treat, I invite you all as my guests after dinner to the special ceremony reinstating my son, Prince Hans, back to his rightful place in this realm with all the privileges and prestige. We also will pay honor to a certain young hero, hailing from our neighbors of the continent in Prussia, for his bravery and chivalry performed this morning in saving the life of your King and the Crown Prince both. This after-dinner ceremony will certainly put the perfect justifiable end to this propitious, eventful day." Herbert shares a nod with his eldest son and the assembly as he leads his visitors away from the Garden Party to move inside to the Castle.

Eldest son Prince Kaleb had done everything to his father's bidding as directed and had set up a swift knighthood assembly to award today's unexpected hero with appropriate commendations for his valor, above and beyond the call of duty.

"We do have some special traditional clothes for you to wear at the ceremony later… _Prince_ _Consort_ Eugene. My valet will be only too happy to assist dressing you, since your own man is…not present." Kaleb tries to make some pleasant small talk, but he was not quite blessed with that affable skill in such an awkward situation as being directed to award the… _illegitimate_ child of his father an auspicious seat in the King's court, reserved only for the elite. The ceremony would now sanction Eugene Fitzherbert as part of this kingdom of Denmark's realm in some recognized way, but perhaps that was as his regretful father intended.

 _I will abide by your decision, Sir, because you are still the King,_ _and my_ _Far (Father)_. Prince Kaleb muses the respectful thought, secretly truly glad inside that he would not have to be crowned King for hopefully many years to come, now that his father seemed to have a new, and happier, lease on life.

"What?!" Eugene begins to freak out as high and mighty Kaleb walks away after the ceremonial pronouncement. "Aw, Liebling! Do I really have to be dragged through all that pomp and circumstance?! My tattoos are still _extremely sensitive_ to the touch and I am **not** looking forward to being suited up in some funky ceremonial duds to have me on display like a circus clown, showstopping as I may be!" A worked up Eugene was not so enthused about being trotted out and touted in a fraudulent ceremony before of those ritzy foreign dignitaries and royal visitors to claim some chintzy medal award that snobs decided to pass around to each other as they had nothing else better to do with their time.

 _Now a hefty cash reward wouldn't go over too badly. I don't think that would be asking too much to switch a high-falutin' knighthood ceremony to a few bags of gold from this filthy rich kingdom._ The naughty boy who had named himself Flynn Rider, who became a thief, who became a hero, once upon a time, still toyed with that first poor orphan boy dream of being surrounded by enormous piles of money on an island all his own.

Eugene was a bit tipsy still – _or was that normal behavior for him?_ – as he stares greedily up at the tall spires of the grandiose Castle of Egeskov and all its vast wealth and choice land holdings.

 ** _SMACK!_**

"Owwie! What was that for, Blondie?!" Setting his maltreated jaw right in his hand, the heroic man of _courage and valor –_ soon to receive an award to be reverently knighted to the Danish court for throwing himself so selflessly over the reigning King and Crown Prince and thusly saving lives without a thought to his own—was not too high and mighty to let out a squeal when his diminutive little wife punishes his mischievous mouth for that savvy tongue with a vicious whack to his right shoulder where the pirate Houtebeen's bullet Bruiser and Killer had inspected but had not yet located earlier, resided in him yet.

"Sorry! I forgot!" From annoyed green eyes to apologetic ones in a 180° turn, Rapunzel makes a wincing face at the result of her rash hand that caused her dear husband pain.

But then again, he was the cause of hers… The pregnant Prussian Princess sucks in some much needed fresh air as one of the pair of little ones within her womb kick at their mommy for being so tough on their daddy.

"Oof." Rapunzel has to steady herself against Eugene's other raw shoulder, as she doubles over in expectant pain.

"See. Little Anxelin agrees with me. Hey! Watch where you're goin', Pixie! I'm about to become a _very_ important personage around here." Eugene's gloat is cut short by an alerted Anna keenly watching those traipsing across Egeskov's pebbled path leading into the impressive front entrance before the Renaissance garden's fleur de lis box tree topiary.

"What's up with Elsa and Hans?" Ignoring Eugene, Anna glomps Rapunzel in a sisterly way as her eyes search for her family amid the noisy garden party scene that was breaking up,

Anna knew her big sister well enough by now to notice the way Elsa was stealing forlorn glances full of longing to the redheaded Prince walking several paces purposely behind her where she was rigidly marching beside their Papa.

"Anna, what do you mean? Is something wrong?" Rapunzel whispers to the young cousin conspiratorially as the pair of shining princesses lean their heads into one another's confidence.

"Something's up! I wonder what's happened – Kristly!?" Anna wonders aloud. Then a light dings off in her head when she just remembers that she had a mind reading psychic love of a hubby at her beck and call.

Anna's hand shoots around Kristoff's thick neck so suddenly that she catches the big blond off guard as he had just finished putting away his bow and arrow to Sven, and responsibly getting the tired beasts prepared for the stables to rest a while. The tall mountain man then trotted up to escort his wife into the open door castle for dinner.

"Hmmm? Elsa and Hans have a problem?" The blond Ice Harvester answers, his Wind Whisperer prowess lightly delving into the couple's glassy demeanor at his bossy bride's demand.

" _Whewww_. Glad you and I have already tied the knot, Baby." Kristoff lets out a low whistle as he feels the tumultuous vibes on the surface of their minds that passed between Elsa, her father, and her new beau, without totally invading their mental privacy.

Anna doesn't fight the urge to rush to Elsa's lonely side, wrapping an arm around her sister's ice cold shoulders, just as her Mama Idun was doing the same with her calming warm presence at her father King Agdar's side.

But as for Hans…

Anna could not in her kind heart be unsympathetic towards her former enemy, especially now that he was Elsa's dearest.

Meeting his constant eyes, Anna looks back to Hans who was left alone to walk through the ambiguity of his thwarted broken heart, now left on his own.

Although, his every loving glance that followed Elsa could never be forbidden from him by anyone on earth, save for her…

* * *

As they rejoin the dinner party from the unpleasant episode in the Ladegården, the visiting King and Queen of Corona and the two Queens of Arendelle were at least trying to be sociable with the other European dignitaries milling about Egeskov's trophy filled front hall.

But the perturbed Arendelle King was not so forthcoming beyond giving out a nod or grunt in recognition every now and then.

With his daughter's arm tucked firmly beneath his, wary King Agdar had been monopolizing Elsa's attention from Hans purposely since they arrived in the castle. The possessive kingly father preferred to have Elsa at his side to assist him to navigate through the collective world leaders and representatives she, as Queen, had more dealings with since the gates had been opened.

After all, King Agdar had only vague acquaintances with the other nations after being captive for the past five years and a recluse long before that.

So Elsa, with her Mama Idun, sighing in frustration, looking on, could do little but acquiesce to her duty as a daughter of a royal house, and monarch, though her heart ached and her hands longed to claim her fiancé's arm instead. But Queen Elsa could only content her yearning with a rueful glance or two at a just as hungry for her Prince Hans.

For now, under her Papa's stringent ruling of mandatory separation, both knew their free time together was limited and oh-so-precious.

Meanwhile, whilst the now kinder and gentler Southern Isles Princes were waiting on the birthday boy hand and foot with a new affection for their parent, Anna and Rapunzel brainstorm with Princess Elisabeth and Princess Antoinetta – who secretly loved to dance - to propose an impromptu dance in the dust-covered Egeskov ballroom.

 _Why have a ballroom with no balls?!_

Gracious Princess Isabelle even offers the services of her specially invited renowned opera singer, Jenny Lind "The Swedish Nightingale", whom Idun, as a princess of Sweden, was enthused to finally meet.

The prolific conductor Niels Wilhelm Gade and the Danish Philharmonic orchestra would provide the music for the dinner.

So why not a royal ball, too?

"What a splendid idea, little Anna! I'm ashamed to say that Egeskov has not hosted a formal ball in decades. Isn't that right, Emma, my dear?" King Herbert latches right on Anna's excited notion when the uninhibited ginger girl had boldly waltzed into the Knight's Hall where the court had gathered after supper and right up to the Danish monarch to ask him the question her unsure Corona cousin couldn't bring herself to broach.

"Yes, Father, I believe you are correct. The last dance party we held here in Egeskov was probably at my own wedding to your Kaleb, over twenty-five years ago." Princess Emma, the pragmatist Englishwoman, still finds a little romance in her hummed recall of the very tune she and her new husband had danced to then.

"Then we shall have one now, and I will ask you and Kaleb to open the ball in my stead, my dear." Proving that he still knew how to be sociable after all these long, cold years, King Herbert instructs his eldest daughter-in-law to exercise her right, as Lady of this House in his Louise's place, to initiate the dance party that enthusiastic Anna had already dashed off to set into motion with many of the ecstatic Princess grandchildren whom she had made fast friends with.

"Oh, no, Father. I'm afraid I have put on far too many pounds to ever be fit to dance a jig again without ridicule. I will have to defer that honor to a younger, lither woman." The plump and retiring, over fifty-year-old British Princess chuckles at herself and reluctant Prince Kaleb in agreement on her arm.

"Forgive us Father, but dancing is out of the question with my bad back." Eldest son Kaleb, at forty-eight years of old age and constant lower back pain, makes excuses to decline the honor.

"Don't be silly! What is this obstinate adverseness to dance in your generation, Kaleb? In our day, there was no more favored pastime for young people, eh, Herbert? Age nor girth should not be a barrier for a waltz at least, boy." King Friedrich contradicts, willing to speak up after seeing his daughter Rapunzel's eagerness for the activity.

His own sixty-five-year-old, plus sized body had feet that were beginning to tap when effervescent Princess Isabelle and Anna had informed the orchestra, just setting up for the after-dinner performance in the parlor, of their King's approval, starts to play an inviting waltz.

"Agreed, Friedrich! Let us never claim to be 'too old or fat or weary to enjoy moving the bodies God gave us to the music He set our lives to, with someone dear." King Herbert fondly remembers how his fiery Scottish redhead Louise had adored having him sweep her across the dance floor of their dust covered ballroom once upon a long time ago.

"Elsie!" King Herbert suddenly calls out his pet name for his favorite 'maid'. Queen Elsa looks up from where she had been in the Knight's Hall dutifully exchanging courtesies with the Italian, French and Spanish diplomats among other foreign envoys who had been so intent in meeting her father King Agdar to hear a retelling of he and his wife's dramatic rescue. The aloof King of Norway consented, perhaps just to keep Elsa away from clinging to that young Westergaard's denied arm as she seemed so wont to do.

"Do pardon me, your Eminence, your Lordship. Papa, Mama." Her ears perked up, Elsa respectfully bows to each Bishop and dignitary and then her royal parents before she moves towards King Herbert's beckon.

Of course, just as the septuagenarian anticipated, Hans was, like a loyal puppy, immediately at her side to lend Elsa his arm as she crosses the bustling Knight's Hall to his father.

"Your sister Princess Anna –" Herbert begins to address Elsa's large luxuriant eyes upon him.

"Actually it was cousin Rapunzel's idea, too!" A giddy voiced Anna generously interjects, pinching Rapunzel's arm with a sibling-like squeeze as she rudely, yet endearingly to the aged King, garners a chastising head shake from Elsa at her impish little sister's impertinence to an older man, let alone monarch, who deserved more respect.

"– Then your cousin, _through_ your sister, if that is permitted –" King Herbert bemusedly acquiesces to Elsa's cute little sister's funny ways. "– has proposed a wonderful idea for us to hold a dance. I, in my birthday celebratory mood, have consented wholeheartedly to it." The King of Denmark felt happier than he had in ages each time more as he gazes to this singular Norwegian beauty's eyes full of faith, hope, and love, particularly for his abandoned boy standing devotedly behind her.

"That does sound wonderful, Anna." Elsa responds in a compassionate smile that Anna was pleased to have brought to her face again. Both Arendelle sisters then look up to the older man who no longer frightened them with that inexplicable cold aloofness not reflected anymore in the crystal clear, unclouded mirror of his eyes.

"I'm glad you approve, your Majesty. There is only one stipulation left to my participation in this impromptu affair." Herbert dangles the enigmatic phrase before Elsa, with a mischievous glint in his eye at Anna over her sister's head as the trio move towards the ballroom.

"Yes?" Elsa asks, something about the way the King sentenced this statement tickling her lips to giggle.

"That you, Queen Elsa, be my first dance partner." The King says decidedly, taking Elsa's pale blue gloved hands in his warmly.

"Dance?" Taken off guard, reticent Elsa's first instinct was to turn to Hans at her side for his opinion on this unexpected matter, to which Hans can only offer her an encouraging nod with a smile.

"But…your Majesty, I'm hardly an accomplished dancer –" The reserved young woman in Elsa denies her dancing Queen skills as she takes a restrained step backwards in reluctance.

"Queenie's just being modest, Pops. I've seen Her Legginess strut her stuff before. Don't take 'no' for an answer. They never do." Eugene pipes up here with a wry smirk and a wink up at the King, remembering how Elsa had forced him into a dance at Anna's wedding about a month or so ago, if just to get him and his estranged wife back into one another's arms.

As Eugene was smirking at Elsa, the snide thief was almost getting even until he finds himself yet again yanked away into Rapunzel's eager to dance arms, despite his constant protests still that _'I don't dance'._

"Whoa! See! I told you! Ugh, Females! Gotta love'em!"

Smiling at this most amusing new son's innuendo, King Herbert seems to speak with a touch of regretful melancholy. He was remembering his bedridden Scottish beauty's final request to him to be waltzed around their bedroom when she was first found out she was pregnant with their last child, namely Hans, in her later years.

 _'Deny me not, one last dance_.'

 _It was as if you knew there would not be another ballroom for you, Louise…_ Herbert doesn't fight back the tears freely flowing from his eyes as he smiles through them to lead Elsa in several slow, measured steps of a waltz to the sovereign's requested tune of 'The Last Rose of Summer'.

Elsa was as lovely a dance partner to the emotional King as she was empathic to his heightened nostalgia. For she, the only other one ever permitted to read Queen Louise's last missive, could appreciate the undying love that the good woman held for this man, even through years of painful hardship and a cold heart's separation.

"She would be so proud to see you here with all of your sons at last." Elsa boldly whispers to King Herbert as she glides gracefully, close to him in the slow rhythmic waltz together.

"Thank you for that, my Elsie. I am so very grateful that it was you who brought my Hans home." Herbert smiles through his sadness at the happy thought that this dutiful young woman with soon be part of his family, too.

"Now you mustn't waste anymore of your fine waltzes on anyone but your true love, my girl. Sometimes all you have is that one last dance." With a heavy heart, Herbert speaks wise words as he hopes for Hans and Elsa's love to blossom. The gray-haired King direct Elsa's gaze to land upon the strikingly handsome face of the redheaded young man watching in rapt attention her every smooth glided move across the floor.

"I have enjoyed our dance immeasurably, Queen Elsa, but my old legs have grown too tired to finish our waltz. Perhaps I can offer you a suitable stand-in in my son, Prince Hans." The plotting older King motions for a certain younger man eagerly waiting in the wings to come towards them as the king pauses in mid-dance at the center of the ballroom.

"That is, if he doesn't disappoint to complement your elegant moves, Queen Elsa." Herbert comes out of his sadness with a teasing, hopeful gleam in his eye for Hans as the svelte prince approaches.

"Yes, Father. I can assure you that my education had not been lacking in that skill. I can securely say I quite distinguish myself in that field." Full of confidence in his dancing ability, Hans teases right back. There was a cocky smile on his stunning features that glisten in the intermittently speckled last rays of sunlight streaming in the ballroom that made the handsome Prince all the more alluring in Elsa's smitten eyes.

"Then I leave you with this rare beauty with all my esteem, my boy." Jovial King Herbert nods deferentially to his youngest child whom the old King now could see such potential and a prodigious future riding upon now.

Before taking his position, Hans makes a flourishing gentlemanly bow to Elsa, utterly taking the breath away of the blonde Queen before he gently yet firmly takes her hand in his.

Herbert marvels at how perfectly Hans and Elsa fit as the two begin the waltz in timed rhythm as the Danish King retires to the sidelines where Kaleb and several of his sons were waiting for him there with a padded Royal chair they had the footman quickly carry in to the ballroom for the older gent.

With a smile, Herbert agrees to sit as he probably watches Hans and Elsa now lead the waltz across the ballroom's romantic setting, as several more couples of his paired off guests and sons and daughters-in law join in.

Though it was not Kristoff's forte, the big mountain man never shirked his duty to accommodate his peppery girl who thrived on an energetic turned around the floor. And wearing this golden yellow, classy Egeskov guardsman uniform, Kristoff looked darn good doing it, too.

"Did I ever tell you I love it when you are all yellow and buttery?" Anna says as she melts like said butter into his arms. Confident to follow her lead wherever she took him, compliant Kristoff smirks at his ginger bride as he dances along with her vibrant, albeit frenzied, dance moves around the ballroom until he was dizzy.

"Hey! Slow down, Pixie! There is an energy level speed limit on this dance floor, Pixie. You've gotta give other folks a chance to catch their breath. Looking good though, my man, as you keep up with your whirling dervish, Muscles." Eugene admonishes Anna and compliments Kristoff as he and his own natural dancer, Rapunzel, make a pass on the growingly populated dance floor.

Several of the royal couples stream out to the dance floor to add their own rhythm as classical music from the polished Royal Danish Philharmonic fills the air.

"I must say, both of your girls are excellent dancers, Agdar, Queen Idun. You must be good teachers." King Herbert smiled amicably when the Norwegian King and his Queen approach the King before the dance floor. "Why don't you two young ones go in for a waltz?"

Agdar had trailed Elsa soon after she left him to watch her dancing with old King Herbert, only to be glowering now that the elderly king had bequeathed Agdar's daughter to Prince Hans' arms.

"Thank you for saying, King Herbert." Queen Idun answers as congenially as she could, but a perturbed Agdar, not so fond of visiting the Danes socially, had been giving everyone, herself included, the cold shoulder all afternoon and her infinite patience was wearing thin. "But I don't believe my husband is in the mood for dancing."

"Mores the pity, Idun. Someone so lovely should never be left a wall flower. May I at least have the pleasure? I do remember you did enjoy a fine dance to '' _Bid Me Discourse'_ all those years ago." As his own wife Princess Frederika with her sister-in-law Emma had been busy in directing the maids and servants in calm proper seating arrangements for the older visitors out here in the garden, Prince Anders was sorely lacking a dance partner.

The insightful man had noticed how Agdar had been sullen cold all afternoon towards his pretty wife and thought it was about time to one up the 'Ice King.'

"Why, Prince Anders! At least _**you**_ remember my favorite waltz." Her youth again alive in the magic of melody, Idun claps her hands together. Her feet were itching to dance to the operatic singer's inviting song and she was almost tempted to take the bait. But maturity's greater judgment prevailed.

Or did it?

 _"Why not?"_ Idun whispers to herself more than anyone after giving a long-suffering glance to her currently immovable, sullen King who was spending more time passing out menacing icy glares at everyone in the ballroom who went by than enjoying the moment.

"I would be delighted to dance with you, Anders." Queen Idun says to the tall, dark and handsome man whom she was once expected to marry, taking his large, gloved offered hand in her small, delicate one. As the Danish Chancellor sweeps her around the ballroom to the nostalgic song she and he danced to decades before, Idun instantly felt like that impulsive spirited girl who reveled in taking wild risks all over again, as the years between them melt away…

As does King Agdar's frosty manner. His already perturbed 'protective father' emotions directed at Hans with Elsa traipsing around the ballroom like lovers, goes for a wild ride of cold vengeance and incensed anger towards his nemesis, Anders, as a beyond jealous husband now.

Still a young enough woman to enjoy the thrill of the chase, Idun relishes in how urbane Anders had not lost that dark and dangerous, debonair edge as he flourishingly skirts her away from Agdar. He stylishly deports himself in their waltz with that same polished sophistication that the calculated politician gave the teenaged Idun the suave sense of twenty five years ago during their turbulent courtship.

In a well-turned dance step, Prince Anders smoothly dips Idun after a graceful spin around at the music's climax as the seasoned pair dazzling the crowd appeared every bit as well-matched in their waltz as any couple ever was.

Watching his old enemy take liberties with his own beloved wife with envious eyes, along with tremendous jealousy rising in his livid chest, Agdar could not hold back any longer. The challenged Ice King glares one more time behind him at an energetic Hans for literally spinning Elsa elegantly like a ballerina doll around the room as if they were professional ice dancers in a competition.

But the Ice King tears his verglas palest blue eyes away from his daughter and her undesired beau to more imperatively stare down his disloyal bride in irritated disbelief instead with emotions that had reached the ice breaking limit.

Crossing the polished floor in a sub-zero cloud of frigidness that all the other couples around had the common sense to back away from to create a cleared path for the irate Ice King, Agdar takes Idun's arm rather forcibly possessive to claim his wife away from her none-too-surprised partner Prince Anders as the song just finishes.

As he separates her from Danish Prince Anders, who sustained the actual cold shoulder quite manfully, Agdar's unconstrained cryokinetics were only slowly abated by the heat of his raw jealousy mixed with the warmth of the song on the lips of his healing Queen.

Idun, in her coquettish chastisement of her mate, had not forgotten to be prayerfully harmonizing along with Jenny Lind the opera star all during their waltz, much to Anders' raised brow quizzical enjoyment as they danced.

Agdar's wily Queen had been banking on her innate curative abilities she directed to reach across the room to her husband's chilly soul - along with her love's hot anger at his rival stealing his woman away _-_ to spare this ballroom section of poor Egeskov from a sudden, unseasonable indoor ice blizzard.

Without a word, Agdar spins Idun around the ballroom dance floor to the Swedish Nightingale's fitting, spirited yet emotional, melody of 'Love's Eyes'. The song, quite coincidentally, was played at the Arendelle Crown Prince and his new bride's wedding, in what seems but yesterday to the pair of royal lovebirds.

 _"Love's Eyes_ _are so enchanting, Bright, smiling, soft and granting,  
Pulses play at every ray, And hearts at every glance are panting.  
Before the beamy eye of morn We view the clouds of night receding;  
So tender glances banish scorn, For who can frown while Love is pleading?  
Love's eyes are so enchanting._

No bandage can those eyes conceal, Though bards in fabled tales rehearse it;  
For if we wore a mask of steel, Affection's ardent gaze would pierce it.  
Love's eyes are so enchanting.'"

Through his rigid ice, the Norwegian sovereign's eyes were just as fervent as they were then upon this lovely woman with the enchanting eyes the whole of his life, his one and only queen. With her glowing look of amused adoration up at him with the girlish, impish glint that knew she won this round, a warming-up Agdar could feel his Idun's eyes full of pure love were still only for him, despite her seeming flirtations with her old fiancé to bring the stubborn man around to realize it. He shakes his head in amazement at her subterfuge, with a small, shadow of a smile gracing his attractive features.

"You have always been able to best me, my love—and that's one of the many reasons why I fell in love with you." He whispers to her, voice full of admiration.

Idun smiles gratefully over Agdar's stabilized shoulder to a saluting Prince Anders who was left in the Norwegian couple's proverbial – and physical – snow dust.

"He beat you to it again, Anders?" Princess Frederika, who had come to claim her husband for an enjoyable rousing dance only to find him offering his services to his old flame, raises an eyebrow to her political husband.

"No, my sweet. Just doing my public service. He's welcome to her. Only a fool would not recognize that those two we made for one another. Just as you and I were, my dear Frederika." Anders smiles most charmingly. "Shall we dance, Madam Chancellor?" Quite eloquently, the political leader of Denmark extends his hand in answer to his wife with his handsome profile replete with genuine sentiment for once in his scheming life.

"I thought you would never ask, Chancellor." Princess Frederika accepts her man's hand as he leads her into the dancing foray, steering quite clear of the Norwegian royal couple.

Two by two, several more of the Danish princes and their wives add to the dancing scene, as well as Job, at Rapunzel's insistence. The tall Caribbean, who had also been dressed up by some of the more modest Princesses, was the 'belle' of the ball, with every eligible granddaughter of the King wishing to take a turn with the tall, dark and mysterious foreign man.

 _"'Beware, then, lest some artful elf  
The infant's smiles and armor borrow,  
To win a throb of joy for self,  
And give his victims years of sorrow  
Love's eyes are so enchanting.'"_

As the melancholy final verse to "Love's Eyes" continued in their waltz, Idun's eyes were closed as she was pressed against her man's cool chest, lost in reminiscence of that special day. But the closer King Agdar drew himself and an unwitting Idun towards a dancing Elsa and Hans, the more his cold anger was reignited again as he applies to the words of the song.

 _What business has this redheaded artful Dane in monopolizing the Queen of_ _Norway_ _'s dance card after I have made my thoughts on the matter clear?_ _Impertinent hellion._ A suspicious Agdar felt this his fatherly duty to intercede before his impressionable naïve girl formed further attachment to this scamp.

 _ **Tap. Tap.**_

"May I cut in…Sir?" Abruptly switching partners on the dance floor, before Idun had a chance to protest, the impetuous parent confronts the young suitor who gentlemanly bows to Elsa's father, relinquishing Elsa, much to both their disappointment.

"Your Majesty." Deflated by the King's cold glare, Hans nods to the older Queen of Arendelle, heart wrenched as he takes up dancing with Queen Idun by rote.

"Oh, Hans. _sigh_ I love him dearly, but my husband is being so impossible to you! Please don't take it personally. He would be like this to any challenger for his precious girl's affections. Just keep trying, please," Idun complains of Agdar's stubborn recalcitrance to face any reality that didn't suit his hard-line vision of an idyllically stagnant happy family with his children, when the pair danced out of earshot of the double icy monarchs of Arendelle.

"The Admiral is only doing what he thinks best for his daughters. It is admirable. If I were ever blessed to have such a beautiful and accomplished daughter as Elsa, I fear I would be as possessive and protective much the same way myself." Hans sympathized with Agdar and smiled across the room where Elsa and her Papa were wordlessly dancing the same dance, though their hearts and minds could be no further part on the heady subject of love for her future.

"You are too gracious, dear Hans." Queen Idun admires the sage young man's erudite magnanimity that rarely time and experience could train a man's mind possessed so well. "You remind me of your mother, Queen Louise, with her discernment and soulful understanding that went beyond years." Idun muses as she brushes a hand to Hans' sideburned cheek.

Hans innocently flushes at the older woman's tender maternal touch. "As a young girl of only sixteen myself, I met your mother only once, here in this very ballroom when you were still in her womb, little Prince." As the slow waltz continues, Idun recalls that memory when Prince Anders' kind, soft-spoken mother in her confinement wished to come out and sit and meet her sons and their sweethearts at her eldest son, Prince Kaleb's engagement party to Princess Emma.

"She was a beautiful woman inside and out, and I know Queen Louise would be pleased with you, even without her loving hand to guide your steps. She must be seen up in heaven, I'm sure, in praise of the Lord to see you now. Any mother would be proud to have such a thoughtful and courageous son." At Idun's sweet words, Hans' eyes fill with tears, though he knew not why.

The intangible emotion unexpectedly rips at his innocent heart, forever longing for his mother's love. Coming from this mother of the one he loved, it meant so much more, giving him hope in stark contrast to her husband.

"Thank you, Queen Idun. I will always think of you as my benefactress. I hold your boundless generosity in great worth and will never depart from my vow to remain constant and true to your daughter, no matter how long it takes." Hans squeezes back her little hands with as much warmth and caring in response to Elsa's mother's charitable encouragement to an abandoned child who yearned for a mother's love for very long time.

After sharing the tender moment, both their eyes gaze out to where Elsa and her stubborn father were silently crossing the dance floor, uncertain of what emotional tumult was lying ahead for them all.

* * *

Once inside Egeskov Castle, the montage of princes and princesses, their children, diplomats, ambassadors, distinguished clergyman and sisters of the cloth had all gathered through the Banquet Hall for the sure-to-be-replete five course meal.

Over the two thousand plate service of the gold gilt set of the fancy setting that once was the pride of Queen Louise for entertaining, dainty small portions of rosemary rubbed squab and herring, potatoes au gratin, lobster bisque and fresh crabcakes were served. The giant black Tiger shrimp served as roasted butterfly prawns that Denmark was famed for was the King's favorite cuisine in all flavors and fancy recipes that Egeskov's downstairs cook could come up with imaginatively for her master's birthday.

Princess Anna had been trying to glean what had occurred between her sister and Hans that could have so dispirited the previously elated couple from just this morning in the church.

What happened to make them become so solemn and serious now during their trek to the big house and here at dinner time with nary a word passed between them?

Sandwiched between twins Prince Rune and Prince Berte, with Kristoff across the banquet table between the pair of Russian princesses cattily placed on either side of him - one in flutter-eyed admiration, the other in snobbish disdain - Anna could only give Elsa, up further at the front end of the table, an encouraging toothy grin.

And Elsa, lost in her own jumbled anxieties that she was attempting to drown in her indulgent warmed dessert of crème brûlée, could only smile back to her concerned little sister.

That was when Czar Nicholas chooses to stand up from his seat beside Queen Idun to make a toast.

"Let dere be a toast to King Herbert and his bounteous feast on dis special day where he has gained de treasure of not one, but two new daughters with intention to join his Royal house with ours, King Agdar." The Eastern European speaks quite eloquently in his heavily accented voice. "First, to my jewel of the Crown, Princess Eugenia and your fine son, Prince Rune's auspicious engagement of marriage. May deir attachment bring much profit and beneficial reward to each of our powerful Kingdoms, King Herbert, adjoined for many years to come." In his thick accent, the Russian Czar stands after the chocolate filled dessert to raise his filled glass to be toasted.

"To Crown Princess Eugenia and Prince Rune!" The gathering of over fifty highborn and connected party guests raise their collective glasses to the celebratory toast that the Russian monarch presented for his worshipped first child.

Princess Eugenia stands and nods regally to everyone with her self-important airs as she looks down her cute little nose to Prince Rune, his naturally ruddy face even redder in the spotlight.

"King Agdar? I hand de floor to you, Sir." In a particularly jolly mood now that his tummy was full of the delicious tastes and his mouth was well supplied with vodka and cocktails, along with his children's futures being secured with this proud Danish kingdom, Czar Nicholas turns to the stoic man seated across from him with the open invite.

It was the Norwegian ruler's turn to give proper salute to the Danish King at the head of the hundred foot long table in Egeskov's Great Banquet Hall where the three visiting high-ranking monarchs gathered sat at this end of the table near their host.

"Ah… Yes… A toast…" Taken by surprise, and a bit rusty in public speaking, King Agdar chokes on his glass of chilled champagne. A long, awkward pause fills the silence as everyone awaits the mysterious King of Norway's much awaited announcement of his daughter's marriage to one of the sons of this kingdom.

"Come, man, don't be shy! I know how hard it is to part with our precious daughters, but you must give us a proper sendoff for your lovely Elsa, as I did for my Rapunzel all those happy years ago!" King Friedrich blurts out to his taciturn brother-in-law. The gregarious Prussian monarch, after his second full shot of vodka shared with the Czar seated closeby, prompts the reticent King Agdar to break his icy silence and speak.

Agdar pauses to stare a long look at a trepidatious Elsa and Hans, and lastly his Queen before raising his long stemmed glass of bubbly.

"I must admit to you all that this is somewhat of a surprise to me…" The Ice King was not very fond of crowds since his own sheltered youth. But as head of his kingdom, Agdar had trained himself to speak his mind honestly as he gathers his discombobulated thoughts.

With a stroke to his fine moustache, King Agdar looks across the table one more time to where his wife then closes her eyes, praying exceedingly for her love's eloquence, and benevolence and good diplomacy that he generally lacked, particularly when it came to the unpleasant subject of his daughters and _young men_.

"Please, raise your glasses, honored assembly, to a splendid and happy future full of joy and God's providential blessing in store for my Elsa, our beloved Queen of Arendelle –" Agdar pauses to gaze at his platinum blonde daughter lovingly, "– and a fortuitous, successful career for your son, Prince Hans, who has gained my confidence to be appointed as my new Vise Admiral and second in command of my fleet of the Sjoforsvaret." Agdar then tips his champagne glass with the cautiously worded toast towards a raptly listening Hans seated across from Elsa, several prominent seats forward from where he would have been as thirteenth-in-line son before.

"To Queen Elsa…and Prince Hans!" It took a great deal of King Agdar's restraint to even utter the blessing of his dear child's name in the same breath as that upstart Dane who had so intruded in upending his illusion of another chance at interrupted family life and childhood bliss they missed out on, this time again with his reunited daughters.

"To Queen Elsa and Prince Hans!" The gathering of the European royalty and envoys of all nations showered their pleasant smiles upon the more handsome couple of the newly affiancéd presented tonight.

As King Agdar beams down upon her proudly with hope his beloved child was not too cross with him for their quarrel earlier, Elsa blushes under all the public attention. She smiles an earnest, grateful smile of slow reconciliation up to her father for, though it was tepid on congratulations, his toast did not offhandedly reject nor publicly dismiss her choice of her betrothal to Prince Hans.

Heartened and satisfied that Elsa seemed more adjusted to their tentative trial basis, Vise Admiral Hans stands to quite dashingly give a Navy style salute to his munificent naval leader and perhaps _– with a glimmer of icicle thin slim hope that this toast signified_ – future father-in-law...

 _I will prove to your father that I will remain constant through any tribulations in wait for you… I am that certain, my Snowflake, no amount of time could ever part us._

"Wonderful, gentleman! Our nations will certainly benefit in so many categories now that our children have brought us together, not only as neighbors, but as family, through their blossomed love for one another." King Herbert nods to each of those around the table representing the nations to which his sons had spread the name of 'Westergaard.'

"Family is very important to me, now. For the Lord gave us our kith and kin to be there to stand by us when all else fails. I have been taught that love has the power to forgive any past wrong, and will come around someday with the proper warmth to light the way." The Danish King gazes directly to Elsa with a grateful nod at how she altered his broken mindset and cold heart before it was too late. "At the end of my years, these special young people and their great, absolving love for one another has made me realize what makes a man so much richer in this life - more than all the lands and kingdoms and power over nations - is the knowledge that, under our Creator's blessed generosity, we will take our family's love with us when we go. Nothing more, nothing less." Herbert meets each of his sons' gazes, finally to land upon Hans who had sparkling, thankful full eyes to the icy blonde beauty across the table for finding it in her generous heart to love and forgive him.

King Herbert of the Southern Isles, like his son, was wise enough to own that he owed the open path to the salvation of his frozen cold soul to Queen Elsa as well.

"To love and family." Raising his glass and heartened head up high, King Herbert makes the final profound toast of the evening, that spoke of everything his once mirror warped and weakened heart could now at last feel and see.

Embraced in that tender palpable emotion, Elsa and Hans shyly exchange a blushing glance full of the hope and longing for their proposed love to come to fruition some day. As Anna and Kristoff raise their champagne glasses to Elsa and Hans, the pair also raise the toast in salute to one another as Queen Idun smiles broadly at both her children who had found true love.

Though her King Agdar still looks upon his daughters' chosen men charily as he sips his champagne, he was in fundamental agreement with King Herbert on the subject of family, love and forgiveness.

Now the stubborn King just had to apply it to Hans and Kristoff, with the love of his precious daughters on the line.

 _This may take some time…_ Idun 's smile curls into a wry simper at her own slow burning iceberg for a brain, warm on the inside, igloo hearted, _un_ sociable ice-man who also did not know how to take shortcuts when it came to sharing love.

* * *

After the dinner was complete, King Herbert and his sons move towards Egeskov's throne room.

Although there was a big gaping blackened hole in the midst of the marble flooring in the otherwise pristine King's court where Count Rügen's grenade had imploded, a large crimson curtain had been tastefully hung to cover the cracked out wall where rows of fancy windows once resided, the Danish court was still a place that demanded decorum and respect.

King Herbert takes to his throne, able to slowly walk each step up to the seat of respect he has occupied for these fifty years under his own power. Although Prince Kaleb and Prince Anders on either side of their father kept a watchful eye that he did not stumble on his way to his throne.

So the audience gathered in the balcony gallery, as others followed the princes into the court to take places on the dais full of seats where a court trial had taken place only hours ago.

A trial of redemption that had changed the life of the gallant young Prince to be fully accepted by his own after so many empty years of derision and mockery by his brethren in the land of his birth; while another's bravery brought him here to be honored by those who should have reviled him as a bastard of their venerated kingdom.

"The Crown calls Hans Westergaard to come before the court!" A herald guard in all his traditional breeches and puffed sleeve finery calls upon the young man who had been disowned and disinherited from his kingdom two years ago and now was present to reclaim his birthright title as a Prince of Denmark.

With a bolstering glance from Elsa standing beside him, an elated puffed up inside Hans strides up the center aisle of the court to where his father was intimidatingly seated on the throne where the young outcast boy had never been permitted to enter.

Though Hans, as a curious, clever, cunning child, had snuck in once, when no one was looking and even dared to sit upon that throne. There he pretended, at least for a little while, that he was King, in his kingdom of isolation.

Of course, that haunting, lonely memory that only he knew of was the one that Hans remembers in this important moment in his life as he nears the King's throne.

Shutting his eyes tightly with the insolent regret of his ambitious past, Hans gracefully falls to his knees with all the poise and deportment of royalty as he lowers his eyes down at the King's feet.

Herbert looks down on his final son's grace and reverent dignity with all the paternal pride he had withheld from Hans for far too many years.

"I, King Herbert, hereby do issue the edict that, from henceforth, my son, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, should be recognized and honored with all the due respect befitting a Royal Prince of this kingdom of Denmark." The gray bearded King announces this ceremonial statement of recognition that would mean so much to the disowned child of this realm.

"So as you have been deemed fit, Prince Hans, for this high estate by myself and your peersto regain all of your entitled due worth as the thirteenth Royal Prince of this realm and all its holdings. And I decree, as Sovereign Monarch of this Kingdom of the Southern Isles, that you, as my heir, shall assume your primary right of ownership as Lord of Holsteinburg Castle and all its lands and estate holdings thereof in the fiefdom of Skælskør as your personal property. I trust you so to uphold as ruling manor lord the citizens there with all the profit of its rich vast farmlands and seabound naval value, as well as its auspicious castle complex. I wish for your beautiful new bride to consider your castle estate of Holsteinburg as your Danish summer home, just a short distance across the Belt so you could visit me in my old age."

King Herbert unexpectedly bestows an important castle with quite a bit of worth to it to a flabbergasted Hans. The King loops the badge around Hans' unsuspecting neck with the cord strung into Holsteinborg Castle's royal crest emblazoned upon it for its new Lordship to proudly don.

"Father?" An emotionally affected Hans was holding back manly tears at this momentous act of his once cold and detached parent to grant him not only back the title that Hans' own rightfully punishable crimes had incurred the recourse of, but also more than his share as thirteenth in line. He had never been well endowed with a monetary fund or estate all his life though he had yearned for one, just as his other brothers were given. But disliked as he was by the King, no one ever made allowances for him with anything much.

More poignantly now, Herbert was giving his fatherly trust for Hans to be responsible heir to this vast estate to the Southern Isle of Zealand's wealthy, rich farmland west coast . Hans puffs up with pride to imagine himself as a manor tenure landowner of a nearly 1500 hectare whole section of this country now at his command as leader of it.

"Rise, Prince Hans of Holsteinborg." King Herbert grants Hans the title that he had been deprived of and overlooked to inherit even a small pittance of what this farm rich vast storehouse would yield, like all his other brothers were already title-holder of.

"Thank you, Father." Hans stands and quite un-decorously grasps tight his father's extended hand that was resting around the sceptre in both of his grateful slim ones. For above this incredible bequeathment of Holsteinborg, the returned recognition meant the world to this outcast child who now finally achieved his father's acknowledgment.

In a daze, trembling Prince Hans does not return to his seat, but rather paces about the edges of the throne room, by the windblown curtain to get some air to steady himself and his frayed nerves for all the attention the audience was giving him.

Elsa proudly had watched the ceremony take place, observing how her love received back his title and rightful domain as she gains an encouraging, disbelieving smile from her astounded little sister.

After a few more minutes of tittering sounds in the audience in approval of the newly reclaimed thirteenth son Prince Hans being granted his own estate of Holsteinborg, the herald's trumpet sounds for the second half of this auspicious Royal ceremony to continue.

Elsa instinctively alights from her first gallery seat beside a grinning Anna and her parents to silently join her heart's love in solidarity.

King Agdar's cautious eyes watch his elder daughter, and his newly returned legs itch to give pursuit. But Queen Idun's hand heavily presses down to his lap to keep her antsy husband in place to give Elsa and Hans some time alone, at least for a little while.

Even if that dashing young Dane had bashfully exited through the blowing curtains to hide his giddy with exhilaration bright red face, and Elsa had sneaked off after him. Agdar had lost the chance to follow them now. Not without being disrespectful of this nation's monarch as King Herbert and the Danish members of the order of chivalry who now come forward to induct an incredulous Eugene Fitzherbert into the knighthood of the Royal Danske society.

A sighing Eugene looks to his glowing wife Rapunzel and her staggered parents at her side, Cassandra and the Royal guards, Job who had made friends with Pascal on his shoulder, and all the Snuggly Duckling guys' literally dropped jaws.

* * *

As Eugene's knighting assembly was going on the throne room, a deeply blushing, quite overwhelmed Prince Hans had escaped the King's court through the conveniently windblown open curtain of the Egeskov Castle glass window wall that ice King Agdar had blasted down earlier this morning.

In utter disbelief of the gold emblazoned badge of Holsteinborg Castle's shield bearers and all it represents around his neck, a breathless Hans leans against the side of Egeskov's castle wing outer structure.

 _Father has granted me a Castle and great land ownership of my own to rule? Holsteinborg? With all its vital land holdings, naval coastal support point and cherished Renaissance Enlightment historical importance?_

With an estate of that magnitude and profitable farmland at his disposal, he certainly had the wherewithal now as vassal in chief with the tenure of a capital manor, to marry anyone he wished. He could now support a family of his own by his own means. Just as a proper gentleman should — to be worthy to provide a comfortable home and living for any lady.

Maybe even a Queen.

It was everything Hans ever wanted.

Hans, giddy with the heady excitement after running through Egeskov's garden to work out his excitement, like a little schoolboy, closes his eyes and leans his head back to a brick wall.

"Ha ha hah hah. Heh heh heh heh."

He then lets out a little chuckle at his unexpected incredible good fortune of blessings rained upon him that the repentant man knew he hardly deserved.

But all of that would be for naught, if, as he suspected, Elsa's father would be successful in dissuading her heart from him. In the two years of this separation due to his enforced naval tour, King Agdar certainly would try to persuade his dear child to renounce her spur of the moment pledge to a young Danish untitled, unfunded nobody.

But now that he had some holdings of his own, and was someone of notable rank again, with more than enough monetary viability to provide for a wife and family – Hans would be able to offer Queen Elsa not only his love, but also a steady income and titled land ownership so he could hold his head up high and not merely scarf off his wife.

"And what is it you could find so funny, Vise Admiral Westergaard?" Elsa's amused voice startles her tentative fiancé when she slinks through the dark curtain and out into the falling dusk to follow her sleek red chestnut stallion in his mad dash around Egeskov Castle exterior.

"?!" Ashamed of himself for anyone to see such foolhardiness, Prince Hans soon realizes who has come when Elsa descends from her ice slide above to place a tender cool finger to his lips.

"Snowflake!" Hans pauses and drops to his knees to try to regain his dignified state after his breathtaking Elsa had appeared after chasing him silently from above down the gravel and grassy paths and into the Rose Garden beyond, when he thought he was alone.

"What brought you all the way out here in the descending dark, you silly boy? When I easily could have transported you here via my ice, without all your physical effort." Elsa feels liberated by the wind as she tosses her braid back over her shoulder and lifts an eyebrow with a coquettish smirk. "Although, I did appreciate the scenic view." A bit cheeky in her approving assessment of her young man's fine physique and such fluent movement like a prized racehorse stallion, Elsa masterfully creates steps from her ice slide that dissipates in the air.

Still short of breath, perhaps even more so due to her breathtaking ethereal appearance as she descends from her shimmering ice pedestal, Hans jumps up with start, and deeply blushing cheeks, from where he had been kneeling to the grass of the beautiful Rose Garden to escort her down.

Elsa allows her caught-off-guard man to lead her along the lovely floral lined pebbled grounds. Hans takes Elsa to a circlet of stone benches that were artistically swirled around in a spherical fashion with many prize rose bushes in full bloom in the well groomed Rose Garden surrounding.

"Oh, Hans. What are we going to do now? Papa seems adamant about the separation. I know he's doing it because he cares, but…I can no longer do without you. I've tried to reason with him but he won't budge." As he sets her down to the bench, Elsa leans her blonde tresses to his warm cheek, feeling so free to speak openly of her heart's concern for him now. She nestles against Hans' tense muscular arms and chest in the fragrant garden's early dusk.

"Min kæreste, (my dearest) it pains me to see such distress on that lovely face… all for me…" The Danish Prince with the velvety voice brushes a tender warm hand across her trembling lips.

The Ice Queen turns those lips to kiss his hands, completely unafraid to be so intimately close in bare skin to skin contact to his warmth. She had once read in a fairy tale story when she was a little girl that you'll know that someone is the **one** , when you take their hand and never want to let go.

She was skeptical about that at the time and scoffed at such romantic foolishness, especially since she herself thought she would never hold anyone's hand, but now she knew…

It was true.

She gripped his had even tighter as she blurts out her feelings in a jumble. "Hans, darling, I'm so embarrassed to you about Papa disavowing our betrothal! I have accepted your pledge to me in all honesty and sincerity. But he wants me to go home and forget this. He wants me to forget you!" Elsa states vehemently as she displays her snowflake diamond studded engagement ring in the waning pinkish and orange streaked dusk.

She kisses the significant piece of jewelry he had given her with contented pathos.

"Then I was right to come here to acquire something special for you to ensure that will never happen. Even if intimidating Admiral Bernadotte wishes it so, my precious Snowflake." Prince Hans stresses his words as he turns his back to her on the bench.

Elsa's fervent anxiety is quelled by her sudden curiosity when she becomes aware of Hans clandestinely attempting to hide whatever he was making in his hands from her. She cocks her head in bewilderment.

The Danish Prince was quite cutely arranging something in his dexterous fingers that were slipping up in his haste for concealment.

"There is a legend that God made all the plants and flowers of the world to bring vibrant color to the barren ground of the earth at the end of the third day of Creation." Hans looks over his shoulder and begins to quietly speak to Elsa behind his back so she could not yet see what he was up to, still working on the secret on his lap.

"When he was almost finished painting the landscape with beautiful views, one tiny unnamed blossom, so small and simple and more shy than her bright and vivid sister blossoms, had waited so patiently all day for her time in the sun." In his eloquence and poetic words, Hans would have any audience captivated. Elsa, also being so madly in love with him, was no exception, hanging on every word, as the Danish Prince directs his intoxicating green eyes at her while he continues to recite his sweet story.

"As the evening was falling and she was yet unnamed, this tiny flower began to worry." Hans pauses dramatically as his hands were so busy, his project still hidden behind his broad shoulders. He succeeds in causing Elsa to grow more and more curious as to what her handsome Prince was building up to with this pretty little tale he was spinning for her benefit.

" _'Forget-me-not, o Lord_!'" The tiny, believed forsaken, flower cried out to be heard in a frightened whisper." The accomplished performer in Hans relates his heartrending monologue with expressive connotation in a girlish tone that makes Elsa positively giggle with delight as he alters his smooth voice for the character of the petite flower in the story.

Hans then spins around on the white marble bench where he was sitting beside Elsa to face her. Amidst the roses in the garden, Hans hands Elsa a quickly tied bouquet of braided golden ribbon made of fresh straw and goldenrod around the delicate stems of several petite blue petalled, yellow star-shaped pistil flowers.

"And God replied: 'Then that shall be your name, my little patient one – 'Forget-Me-Not'." Hans meaningfully completes the punch line of his poignant retelling of the origin of the flower passing between their hands. He meets Elsa's blushing and adoring eyes that were a stunning reflection of the azure blue shade of the small diminutive true blue forget-me-nots with the lovely spiraling curve of their inflorescence.

"Hans, they're perfect…" Elsa murmurs with a gasp, engrossed in his touching anecdote. She was a student of the 'language of flowers' enough to know that in the special romantic secret code that only lovers shared, the charming and delicate forget-me-not was the sign of faithful fidelity and constancy and the epitome of unflappable true love, just as the simple name correlated to a heart that would remember its devotion throughout eternity.

"Just like the **you** I will never forget, my Snowflake. I will never forget how prettily your arms glistened right here in the brilliant sunset, how soft your lilting voice whispered music to the quiet of my soul. How the simple tender touch of your cool hand sent my senses into a delirium of joy just having you so close to me..." With kisses to her hands, up her arms, on her forehead, Hans pulls Elsa to his chest and embraces her with all of the true emotion he had reserved for his one and only true love.

"I have had dreams of you and I like this, awashed in the sunset of the first glow of evening, lost in one another's arms. Elsa, nothing can ever take away this moment from us, this beautiful twilight that is ours alone." Hans says with a romantic husky voice to assure his lady that at the end of all the trials, he would still be waiting for her patiently.

"In all my dreams, I've loved you so, that by now I already think I know what it'll be like to be loved by you." As if serenading her with the song of his heart, Hans whispers against Elsa's soft platinum hair, wanting to memorize her soft scent as he pulls back to catch every line of her delicate beauty he was gazing upon to the palette of his mind.

"My Prince… I've dreamt those dreams as well, but never really thought I could attain them. Until you'd given me hope to dare to dream again. Thank you." Elsa carefullly smoothes the tender little blue flower petals in her fearless cool hands, tears forming in her eyes again as the sun sinks even lower in the rising darkness.

"Elsa. Promise me that whenever you feel sad or alone – or dare I say – _missing me_ –" The attractive young man smirks inwardly with a devilish glint in his unwavering green eyes.

"–this time apart, long or short, my darling, please remember the story of the hopeful little blossom, as I will remember you, every waking moment, and the patience that assures a true and devoted heart will be one day richly rewarded with the blessing of love." Prince Hans, with hope offered to his lady love, had reserved one especially lovely pale forget-me-not blue to place artistically delicate and weave into Elsa's shining platinum locks of hair cascading over her pale forehead.

"Forget- **me** -not, my love." Elsa revels in the total romanticism of her young man as she uses her own artistic genius to create an exact icy replica of the tiny little six petal blue flower shivering in the wind directly onto a mesmerized and awestruck Hans' navy blue jacket chest, beside his Vise Admiral stripes and new golden badge of his own royal estate's coat of arms.

The little bouquet he gave her Elsa instantly freeze-dries in her hand as Hans affixes it to her purple jacket as a corsage memento of their last private time alone in Egeskov.

" **Nothing** will change my love for you, my beautiful Snowflake. Nothing. No matter how long it takes, no matter who you may meet, please don't forget me, and know, I could never and will never forget you." Hans was secretly possessive by nature and more than a bit jealous of any other young men who may cross Elsa's path in the unforeseen future already.

* * *

As the endless waltz to the music of their hearts in the quiet of the evening draws to a close, Hans leans into Elsa's ear to breathily whisper one last request.

"Before I must bring you back to the bosom of your family, _min kære_ (my darling), please allow my greedy eyes wish to soak you up to the final flecks of the sunset's rays, my beautiful Queen." Hans takes several steps back and stands in the descending twilight, his verdant green eyes entranced with every contour of Elsa's pale face.

"Hans. You're making me blush." Modest Elsa shyly averts her bashful gaze from his enticing eyes.

Hans teasingly tantalizes as he leans against the marble fountain at the center of this impressive rose garden to adore his lady love from a more respectful distance. But this only gives Elsa time to think again.

A thoughtful ice Queen, upon glancing down at the final sparkling of the snowflake ring adorning her left-hand finger, realized that the sun was setting and would mean the end of this wondrous rendezvous.

Elsa bites her lower lip in nervous habit, her eyes unfocused, appearing to him to be mesmerized by his tight white trousers, as the young man's lean frame made quite a picturesque study, if he did say so himself.

"Ahem. If you're quite finished…enjoying the view of my 'Southern Isles…'" Hans pauses for dramatic effect. His ' _Southern Isles',_ as he so indelicately and humorously labeled the area Elsa's eyes had been seemingly entranced by for the past few minutes, were quite unashamed to be on full display of his own prominent frontage.

"Hans Westergaard! Of what are you referring to, sir? Or should tell my Papa on you, for being so naughty?" Her pale cheeks as red as can be, Elsa's downcast face is turned around instantly. She was immediately lifted from her doldrums by his odd humor and cocky brass. She was more enticed than appalled as she should have been by this roguish redheaded boy teasing her in the moonlight with a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Elsa! Dance with me!"

 _If just one more time…_

With that last ephemeral melancholy thought in silence through the wide smile on his handsome features, Hans impetuously abandons his poised place carelessly leaning against the marble fountain to grasp both of Elsa's joined hands abruptly into his, quite out of the blue.

Without missing a beat, her dextrous young Danish Prince sways his partner into a rapturous enchanted waltz over the rosebeds and well trimmed edging strips of low box hedges in Egeskov's lovely rose garden.

Prince Hans lifts Queen Elsa to her feet as he twirls his long legged love expressly around their own fantasized dance floor, as if they were the only two in the entire world in that moment.

But then Elsa sees the ice forget-me-not frosty blossom she had constructed, melting into Hans' wonderfully warm chest. She reconstructs it and this time, she bestows it with a kiss. Hans grins in wonder and awe at her abilities and little captivating ways that to him, were perfect. **She** was perfect. He raised her hand to his lips once more, kissing her knuckles and palm in adoration.

 _And she is mine…_

A smitten Elsa lets her sadness go to revel in these pricelessly irreplaceable moments of being twirled in her true love's arms, to create everlasting memories engulfed in the sweet green pastures of Hans' dreamy eyes.

In the secure embrace of her confident lover, Elsa allows her charming prince to lead her into this new and exciting stage of their budding relationship, now blossomed into vibrant full bloom, despite the shade that the forecasted rainy season of separation to come would no doubt bring.

But right here, right now, in their fascinating Spring of new love, Elsa and Hans' dreams for one another were strong enough to last them more than a lifetime.

Queen Elsa and Prince Hans' heart sing a romantic duet to each other as both lose themselves in the fleeting moment with the fervent prayer to the Lord above to let time pass quickly, and not wither on the vine as many young couples before them were driven apart.

But Hans and Elsa both knew that the depth of their bond for one another would brighten and mature with time, and never fade. They each had lived in loneliness and struggled for love most of their lives, and so understood more than most how precious it was. How precious dreams could be.

 _'I have dreamed of you…'_

As celestial violins play in the still evening, thrills run up her spine as Elsa euphorically feels her spirit soar as Hans' unchained melody reaches those high notes for her and her alone.

The two of them had only eyes for one another, as the polished consummate dancer in Hans Westergaard urges reserved Elsa Bernadotte out of her shell to be his exquisite partner tonight to trip the light fantastic against the glimmering moonlight.

As they dance an elegant waltz amidst the sweet scented roses, graceful Elsa at his skillful lead's command, dazzles the dashingly fluid Hans with a luminescent spray of reflective snow crystals that the Ice Queen sends up to the full moon to lend the two of them some little refractions of the romantic radiance of moonbeams.

The lovers sway in perfect rhythm with one another to a silent three-quarter time waltz as the same song so pristinely clear reverberates in their linked hearts, together under the intoxicating dusk.

"Please, my beautiful Queen, may I hear your voice say how you care before we are forced to part? Because I've dreamed every word you'll whisper so many times, but I want to hear your own sweet voice truly ring in my ears, to carry indelibly into the blank parchment of my dreams. I know when the time finally comes, that I will love being loved by you, my darling Elsa." Hans murmurs in Elsa's platinum silky hair as their stunning waltz turns into a slow dance, gathering her closer to his heart.

"Hans… I can only live now knowing what it's like being loved by you." Adoring how he looked so genuine and earnest in the soft glow of early evening, Elsa sincerely answers her admired Prince with shimmering eyes. "I love you…min elskede en." (my darling one). Then she grants an ardent kiss to his beyond pleased lips, her slender arms fully thrown around his surprised neck, his desire to hear her expression of love completely satisfied.

The final scintilla of sunset gives way to the revealing moon over Hans and Elsa enjoying each other's loving embrace in one last dance beneath the moon, beside the sea. That's when the precious little ice blue forget-me-not she had placed over his warm heart that beat only for her, entirely melts away, its cool moisture weeping into his bursting heart.

But the cold never bothered Hans anyway.

As for the tender petal forget-me-not Hans had entwined in Elsa's hair before, it flutters away in the couple's last desperate snatch at windswept ecstasy as Hans lifts and twirls Elsa with one final flourish to their dance—to fall quite paradoxically at the feet of a vexed creation of cold ice.

A spying Marshmallow peers into the garden and cocks his head, delicately picking the flower up from the ground. With a happy, innocent smile on his pleasant snowy features, the puzzled Snow Beast then lets out a small confused growl after he hunkers down to catch a glimpse of this particular, presumptive Prince's face in the forming moonlight.

The miniscule flower's fragile petals in his monstrous fingers are suddenly ripped off when he slowly comes to recognize whose arms his mistress was within.

The nearly thirty foot tall Snow Beast had been lurking around Egeskov and now was standing threateningly over the Rose Garden, by mental command of the Ice King himself, to collect his wayward child from her dalliance with that mangy cur of a Dane who had sneaked her away in the dark of night.

The vicious, resentful snow creature begins to seethe with puffs of ice emanating from him at the visage of the despicable man who had maimed and sliced off poor Marshmallow's leg two years ago that left the monstrous snowman still with a limp.

Elsa's icy bodyguard slits his charcoal black eyes that also would never forget, as sharp icicle spikes are instantly drawn all across his ice muscling-up arms, down his back and to his legs as he recognizes just who this 'Prince Hans' was.

And the tiny fragile forget-me-not flower that the sensitive, colossal snow creature had attempted to preserve before is now squeezed and shredded and shattered to a frozen pulp in his massive fingers, as his threatening dark shadow looms over the impervious embracing couple…

* * *

Songlist this melodic chapter:

'Love's Eyes' by Samuel Woodsworth 1825

'Bid Me Discourse' Henry Bishop 1820

'The Last Rose of Summer' Thomas Moore 1813

"Avaloran Lullaby" from Elena of Avalor 2016

"I Have Dreams" duet I had Helsa singing in the Rose Garden was inspired by Santino Fontana & his Cinderella costar Laura Osnes recent concert last week of a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical tribute! You've gotta look it up and hear how beautiful the pair perform this touching song that fit right into this chapter! ^_^

* * *

Hello Frozen aficionados!

Did you enjoy this wrap-up ride in the Southern Isles? Hans certainly is a lucky guy to have secured not only Elsa's love, not only the forgiveness of Anna, not only been appointed Vise Admiral in King Agdar's navy not only the acceptance of his dozen (or so, Eugene :) brothers, but now his once cruel cold Father has given him a massive castle estate!

Whoa. Did not see that coming! But now that our Hans-some prince has everything he's ever wanted, a castle of his own with great land and income, prestige in the Sjoforsvaret, recognition from his kin, respect from a family he'd never before known – all he need to do is to bring the girl of his dreams home.

So, what's a little patient waiting to the kind of deep love Elsa and Hans have discovered in one another? After some romantic waltzing, Hans and his truly tender presentation of the 'forget-me-not' flowery story to his darling was really touching, wasn't it? If I wasn't already madly in love with my Wind Whisperer, I could fall for that Red after this chapter…AHHHH! (the feisty Anna in me is kicking and screaming!)

Now, as for the song "I Have Dreams" that Hans and Elsa were soulfully singing to one another in the Rose Garden with violins playing by moonlight…...? The lyrics of the legendary musical songwriters Rodgers and Hammerstein's song from 'The King & I' fit in so beautifully with this final chapter's romantic climax scene for our Helsa. And Santino's velvety tenor will take your breath away. (Like Hans does to Elsa, everytime!)

 _'I will love being loved by_ you!"

FYI: In real life Jenny Lind "The Swedish Nightingale", was a lovely opera singer that Hans Christian Anderson, the writer of the original 'Snow Queen", was quite an ardent admirer of the beautiful soprano of his day. Pity she did not reciprocate the wonderful writer's affections! ^-~

Please review your favorite part of this fun and festive Birthday party afternoon in Egeskov! ^_^

There'll be a bit of an epilogue soon to come, as I left this uber-long episode as a sort-of cliffie with Marshmallow vs Hans capping the Helsa love scene.

The epilogue's already written, just to be typed, so I'll finish this Book 2 up soon! Really, truly this time!

Then, Book 3's Easter debut next month can still be on schedule! (fingers crossed!;) I'm very excited about it, with so many new ideas swimming around. It'll start with Hans at his naval duties and Elsa pining away for him up in Arendelle with Anna and Papa plotting in two directions concerning Elsa & Hans' long-distance relationship. We'll see which determined ginger will come out on top there…

So God be with you, my friends 'til then! And thanks for being patient, my friendly forget-me-nots!

Love,

HarukaKou

Hello again, my Frozen friends!  
After several of my reviewers voiced that an opportunity had been missed in the story, I, in circumspect, agreed that it would have played better had the former affianced couple danced together to make Agdar even more jealous, so I altered a bit of this chapter about Queen Idun dancing with Prince Anders instead of turning him down. Then the rest is all the same. Thanx for putting up with me, guys! I really value your opinions, and I want this story as good as it can be! God bless! See you soon for the epilogue!

HK :3


	31. FrozenAgain-TheGreatest is Love-Epilogue

_NOW the sequel has a sequel, published on this latest Easter day again! 'Frozen Again: Love Never Ends' has begun!: The newest story has just been launched on Easter day 2017 to see the continuation of this Book 2! Please follow and read and review the third book in my Frozen Again trilogy's conclusion, and join in the romance, adventure and fun after you're finished with this Book 2! And always, thanks for your avid support and readership, my Frozen friends! :)_

 _HarukaKou_

 _Be sure to follow all 3 books to get the latest chapter update! :) And Olaf and Eliana love reviews!_

* * *

 _We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

" **Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

 **Act V**

 **Epilogue**

 ** _GRRRR! RRROAARRR!_**

Disoriented from the passionate kiss he had been bestowing upon his lady love, Elsa, in the moonlight by the earsplitting feral scream, Prince Hans reflexively comes to his senses.

On pure adrenaline rush instinct, Hans instantly spins on his booted heel to gallantly push the Queen of Arendelle behind his back defensively. He forcefully, yet gently shoves her down to the Rose Garden bench where the young lovers had been just romancing upon minutes ago.

But those automatic chivalrous actions only cause the Snow Beast to growl fiercer and thrash his pontificating arms in madness. Rows full of sharp ice spikes shoot out to enlarge threateningly with his protective rage.

Hans produces his naval broadsword that Elsa had commissioned him with as the unforeseen aggressive assailant suddenly approaches his flank.

"Marshmallow! No!" Elsa cries out as her frozen, nearly thirty foot tall bodyguard roars his intimidating vehemence to sleet ice rain drool down at the despicable man. The bestial snow creature clearly recalled with utter loathing that this person was the one to have hurt him before, both physically and in pride.

Marshmallow reaches down at the insignificant – _compared to the gargantuan_ – little redhaired boy who had once chopped off his left leg and sent the snow giant plummeting off the North mountain.

"Marshmallow! Please! He's not the enemy anymore!" Elsa begs her big frosty friend, jumping back up from the bench to her icy stilettos to approach Marshmallow. But as the protective Danish Prince's halting arm holds her back from the out-of-control Snow Beast's vicious ice fangs a few feet above their heads, the angry ice monster could no longer hear Elsa's tearful plea in the torrential blizzard storm of cold vengeance and hatred for this despised prince who bested Marshmallow in his duty to protect his Ice Mistress before.

 _Never again_!

A silently seething Marshmallow's snow blind anger made him a rather fearful force of unrelenting nature as he towers menacingly over the sword wielding man who was a fifth his large-scale form with more anima than ever before. Perhaps this excessive fury was spurred on by Ice King Agdar's mental wariness of this tainted Prince who dared to woo his daughter. After all, it was the Ice King who sent his large frozen minion, Marshmallow, out to collect Elsa and bring her back in from spending alone time in rendezvous with this Danish firebrand and solidify their undesired relationship further.

So when Marshmallow arrived to find the iniquitous Prince forcing his wicked grasping intention on his previously sheltered and pristinely pure Queen Elsa, it set off his icy venom of frostbite spikes forming along his back and knees and body to enumerate.

 **"** _ **GO AWAY!"**_ Marshmallow's livid smoking cold mouth threateningly growls the angry declaration with bitterness towards the nemesis who still haunted the big snowman's nightmares.

Undaunted by this formidable threat, Prince Hans Westergaard stands tall before the monstrous snow creature. He takes exactly the same defensive pose in the exact same swordsman stance with his long blade gleaming back at his opponent, along with that same masculine determination to win when challenged and be the victor in battle, his eyes never straying from Marshmallow's.

"Hans! Please don't!" Beside herself with fright, Elsa's joyful bliss of being in her love's embrace moments ago goes frigid in her struck cold heart in fear for both her dear defenders at such deadly odds pitted against one another again.

But there was something else, well beyond assurance and determination behind Hans' stunning green eyes that flash back over his shoulder to her, that heartened Elsa to trust him to handle this his way.

Going by faith in her love alone, Elsa quietly steps back and watches in frozen horror as her Prince Hans takes several swift, decisive steps towards Marshmallow with his sword drawn from it sheath held high as the Snow Beast glowers down at him, preparing a deadly counterattack for the imminent strike…

 ** _SPLURT!_**

But Hans shocks both woman and beast with ice in their veins as he plunges his razor-sharp sword not into leg nor fist nor heart of the humongous creature for any debilitating incision or blow, but rather into the dirt of the rose bed precisely at Marshmallow's feet.

"Huh?"

Hans astounds a bewildered Marshmallow even further, as, instead of rushing at his foe in assault of the confrontational violence the gigantic ice monster was fully ready to battle and win this time, Hans fall to his knees.

Vulnerably he kneels at Marshmallow's massive feet beside his abandoned sword weapon that was harmlessly immobilized in the garden's earth.

"I am here before you on my knees with my heart in my hands outstretched to you, as Queen Elsa's sworn protector, to beg pardon for our deleterious past encounter." Hans' glistening eyes plead with the huge, aggressive Snow Beast, silently adding: _'I surrender myself to you because we both care too much for Elsa to ever cause her any fear or frustration.'_

"I bow to your strength with a humble request I place before you now, my dear fellow, for a vital task that I can rely only on you alone to fulfill in my place." In his cool and collected lofty demeanor, a deferential Prince Hans bows his head in respect to the utterly flummoxed snow monster as he continues to bravely speak.

The consummate performer in Hans once again uses his vocal eloquence to not only calm the Snow Beast, but attempt to befriend him as an equal, to boot.

Marshmallow ceases his loud roaring in thumping his angry chest and shaking his fists about that intended to squeeze the life out of this annoying red scum once and for all. With furrowed snowy brows in confusion, the baffled creature pauses in mid-vengeful action.

He stares down at the man kneeling oh-so-gentlemanly beside the detestable discarded sword that left Hans Westergaard completely defenseless at the Snow Beast's mercy.

Elsa, at first petrified at the inevitable fight where one - or both - of her dear ones would certainly have been injured lest she stepped in to stop their confrontation, was now delightfully impressed by Hans' remarkable ability to ingratiate himself and charm his way out of almost any situation.

The confounded Snow Beast retreats his vicious fanged teeth. The armor built up around his head recedes when he leans in cautiously, in curiosity, to hear more of what this now interesting human was proposing to him as if the ice creature was perfectly sentient and intelligent company.

Elsa watches in awe as she witnesses Hans placate a livid Marshmalllow, without lifting his sword, enough for the pair of enemies to almost peacefully come to a stand down. She marvels at young Mr. Westergaard's diplomatic abilities—even with a cold hearted snow monster.

Rather than either side forcibly striking out at each other as expected, Marshmallow in angry vengeance to crush and reduce this infuriating infinitesimal being to a red splat on the ground; or Hans' defensive sword raised to sever and debilitate another matching monstrously frozen body part again, to prove some aggressive male dominance; Hans had a softened Marshmallow practically eating out of the palm of his hand by the end of their 'manful discussion'.

As the Queen's most loyal defender, Hans wanted to recognize Marshmallow and in order to legitimatize that belief, he glances to Elsa, pointing to his new coat of arms medallion wordlessly.

Their minds as one, Elsa understood that Hans desired for her to create a similar coat of arms badge for Marshmallow made of ice. She ice magically complies, copying the proud Holsteinborg coat of arms that displayed the headless shieldbearers of the realm, protectively guarding the symbolized Christian Cross as sentinels on either side.

"As the first act of my kingdom estate in the realm of Holsteinborg, I choose you, Snow Beast Marshmallow of Ice Queen Elsa's North Mountain, to serve as the steadfast honorary Captain of the Guard of Holsteinborg. You will be appointed my royal estate's chief guardian in defense of Queen Elsa's future residence when we will request your company to join us there as our most trusted chief defender."

With the enlarged ice badge Elsa had created for him in his hands, Hans tentatively stands and approaches a more passive Marshmallow, offering the ice badge of honor up to the quizzical Snow Beast that Elsa cryokinetically floats through the air to magically affix to Marshmallow's chest armor.

With it, the sagacious Danish prince had just granted a position of great esteem to this, at times, lonesome in the world, creature of ice that spoke solely of the love and devotion they shared for their Queen.

"And because you are her most dedicated guardian, I will be relying on you in my absence from Arendelle, during the tour of my naval service to her great empire, to beseech you to protect my Queen in my stead, dear friend _Marshmallow_." Hans uses the familiar name that he had heard Elsa and Anna, and Olaf — _however drippingly sweet and sticky_ he considered it—to impress upon the giant snow monster that he was a trusted friend and not an enemy.

A thoroughly confused Marshmallow's ebony eyes blink several times with a big frosted question mark floating over his flummoxed head as he gazes at the fancy ice created badge with the knightly symbols guarding the Holy Cross that was made just for him.

But Marshmallow was torn. Part of him wanted to strike Hans down and smash the little red worm to a pulp underfoot instantly. But the other part wanted to stare this despised Prince deep in the eye to see if any of what he was saying was possibly true and not all just deceit.

But how could he tell? The cold baritone voice ringing in the depths of his bestial mind prompted the Snow Beast in Marshmallow to frigidly do away with this bothersome Danish Prince. Shaking his head, the Snow Beast roars to life again, his ice spikes rebuilding…

"You see, Marshmallow, Prince Hans is my lover now. He has proven so many times how truly repentant he is of all the things he did wrong in the past and I've forgiven him. I love him, and wish for you to learn to be fond of him, too. Please, won't you try for me?" Sensing his split distress, Elsa flutters her feminine wiles up at her huge creation of snow and ice.

Marshmallow could hear Elsa's soft warm soprano over the cautious and chilled, wary kingly baritone messing with his head as he looks over the bowed to the ground red Prince.

Just then another voice enters the fray. A silly, little one that Marshmallow always would pay some attention to for its honest innocence.

"Yeah, Marshmallow! Just Hans is a good guy now. And he wants to make you his Royal Captain of the guard?! How cool is that!? I always imagine myself to be the 'Royal Captain of Love Experts Guard'. I think Hans really loves Elsa, too. Let's see…" The little snowman bounces up to his big counterpart nearly ten times his size as he begins to count on his branch fingers all the exciting things Hans had done to prove his love for Elsa of Arendelle.

"Just Hans fought a vicious pirate with a sword, rowed a boat clear across the ocean and followed his heart to find Elsa. Once they were reunited he traveled through rain and sleet on a sleigh in search of finding a kidnapped Anna. He and Eugene used just a pulley and their muscle to get us to the top of a great big mountain where we freed Anna and found the King and Queen on a deserted island and this guy here jumped in front of a bullet for King Agdar! Just Hans even had the guts to ram a sailing ship into a huge sea monster as he stared down its thrashing tentacles." Olaf was really getting into his storytelling skills as, extolling an embarrassed Hans' virtues unabashed, the animated snowman was scratching his branches about the empty air dramatically in imitation of the fearsome Draugen.

"Just Hans faced death and destruction around every corner to save Elsa and Anna and their Mama and Papa and Rapunzel and Eugene and me, I guess, too, on that incredible journey. Yeah, Just Hans is our hero. And I am going to give him a warm hug right now for all he's done because he cares so much for Elsa! Hug time, Just Hans!" After his long, uninterrupted tale that had Marshmallow absolutely mesmerized, Olaf turns around with his arms outstretched up to the tall, svelte redhead who was blushing from all the little honest snowman's blunt accolades.

"Oh… Yes, certainly, Olaf. Heheh." Hans chuckles at the silly moment as he stoops down to gingerly wrap his arms around the cold mound of ice with a warm heart of gold inside, looking up to Elsa with adoring amusement at her first creation, over Olaf's giggling head.

"You're right, Olaf. My Hans is **my** hero. I love him—and there is no more fear in love." Elsa was finding it easier to speak of her affection for her man truthfully from the heart without compunction or embarrassment, as her luminous eyes envelop Hans' within them meaningfully.

"I LOVE WARM GROUP HUGS!" An ecstatically friendly Olaf tugs the laughing young woman down to join their kneeled hug.

A smiling, chuckling Hans welcomes Elsa to the cozy - albeit discomfited with Olaf squeezing both slim young bodies at his level tight – embrace. The handsome prince draws his arm around Elsa with a warm caress along her beautiful, slender neckline that he, in shame, vows to never let anyone endanger ever again.

As Marshmallow gazes down at the touching scene, all of anger's ice spines that were sharp enough to impale a man slowly retract as his frozen heart melts into a soft slush at Olaf's adventuresome account and their lovely Ice Queen Elsa's appeal for her lover.

Suddenly feeling left out as he awkwardly plays with Hans' sword in his monstrous hand, Marshmallow leans down low to be at their level. The snow creature extends his great big finger towards the hugging trio with softened charcoal black eyes.

"Thank you, sir." Hans responds with due respect as Marshmallow gently hands Hans back the discarded sword, watching with baited breath as Vise Admiral Westergaard replaces the weapon in its empty sheath.

The gargantuan pats a stiffened Hans gently on his unflinching stately shoulder. Then the silent Snow Beast proudly grins as he adjusts his new royal Holsteinborg coat of arms ice badge that signified his role as the estate's Captain of the Guard whenever Queen Elsa's chief bodyguard came down to visit Prince Hans' new manor.

"I give you my greatest trust, my friend, to guard all of my worldly **_and_** my _heavenly_ possessions in my absence." Hans addresses Marshmallow with as much dignity and respect as he would a human of great standing.

Hans' gaze of pure worship upon the cherished gift of _his_ greatest possession in this lovely Ice Queen is mirrored in the appeased Snow Beast's, too, over his shoulder glowing down to her. Even Olaf totters over to Elsa to smile up and sway at her with sincere adoration.

A shy, blushing Elsa, speechless upon deciphering Hans' denotation, graces the early twilight with her unrepressed lilting laughter at all this undulated attention, as she shyly moves away down the garden path.

Her sleek, demure movements cause Hans to follow her every step. As Elsa pauses to modestly glance back at him, Hans stands back to soak up every wispy contour of her lithe, elegant outline as only a man so desperately in love could.

"Oh Snowflake _, min kærlighed_ (my love), you are so soft and perfect and lovely in this moonlight. If only I had time to capture you just as you are now. To keep a vivid picture of you with your platinum hair all wispy and loose looking so beautiful and free, close to my heart at all times. Perhaps I could survive this trial, just to have this scene of you looking up at me with those eyes so full of love as they are now." Romantically caught up in the falling moonlight, Hans fights the urge to embrace Elsa, fearing he would mar the picturesque vista of her beauty with his unworthy touch.

"Hans, you're making me blush again. Why a portrait of me? You were the one so wonderful with Marshmallow just now. How could I not gaze upon you with anything other than awed admiration? I am hardly as noteworthy memorable in this instance." Elsa breaks her reserved quiet to softly articulate with a coy smile still tickling her lips up at him.

"It's not that I could _ever_ forget what you look like, my love – that is forever seared in my mind and engraved on my heart! But this lonely man wishes he could have a miniature—a small memento of you—from this precious moment, to take across the seas with him. But, alas, I fear there is no time." A reddened Hans unabashedly blurts out his desire to have something of her that he could keep close to his heart during their separation.

But he knows no one could capture her as he envisions her now, even more clearly stunning and vibrant with eyes full of requited love gazing back at him.

"Then you will have it." Swallowing her modesty in favor of artistic perfection to please him, an earnest Elsa closes her eyes to focus her magic cryokinetic powers to masterfully craft a tiny cameo sized miniature on a necklace pendant that she imbues with an endless frozen crystal shell.

Beneath the crystal clear snow globe-like tiny dome the Ice Queen artistically illustrates a crystallized miniature type of portrait to be placed on this elegant little ice carving her heart sculpted for her lover to keep beside his for always, no matter how many nautical miles lie between them.

A perfectionist by nature, and the artistic heart in Elsa had glimpsed her reflection in the mirror enough times to illustrate herself with her tremendous ice magic skill that Hans had encouraged her to develop, to create this miniature for her beloved.

The result of the Ice Queen's delicate artistry was the beautiful tiny image of herself that would be etched on the ice and permanently encased in this two inch diameter miniature.

Elsa had completed this small portrait of herself for him to keep as a locket that he could take with him to sea, just as her romantic fiancé had requested. She slides the locket onto the silver necklace chain with her own Crucifix pendant to bestow around her knight in shining armor's neck.

After staring blankly speechless for several moments at the magical small locket Elsa had lovingly placed around his cutely freckled neck, Hans could finally bring himself to speak to her prompting eyes.

"Snowflake, you never cease to amaze me." Hans fingers the delicate shimmering ice pendant of his lady love smiling just as she was a moment ago, with special attention to the eyes on the sculpture filled with her love for him. "This is a treasure beyond comparison to me." Hans strokes lightly the continual ice locket with Elsa's image delicately chiseled upon it, his deft fingers reverently touching her personal silver crucifix for all its merciful significance blessedly entwined on the same chain.

"Thank you." Hans sincerely smiles upon her with unmitigated love and pride, making Elsa blush again. All at once, she felt so happy to be able to do this for her love to cause him to smile like that at her.

"If I can build an entire architecturally sound Ice Palace on the edge of a mountain in one night, I think I can handle this little piece of artwork for my man." Elsa responds with a tad bit of pride in having his love to inspire her to achieve this new endeavor of her ice's creativity. So much so she forgets herself with her bold new term for him that caused Hans' titian eyebrow to quirk in pleasure.

"There is no doubt in my mind and in my heart that ' _my woman'_ can do anything she sets her beautiful mind to do, sweet Elsa of Arendelle." With the matching moniker tease he took a secret thrill in, Hans exceeds Elsa's satisfaction with his own belief in her magic on so many levels unquestioningly, as she slips into his arms as easily as his gentle lips slip into hers.

"Let's hope that is so, for both of our sakes, _min elsking (_ my darling _)_." Elsa says, breathlessly parting their stolen kiss in the moonlight with a bit of trepidation as she glances over to the castle where the sounding trumpets of the Herald signified that the knighting ceremony was complete.

"Before I escort you back into Egeskov, my dearest one, there is one more thing I would ask you to do for me." Prince Hans' silky, yet commanding voice breaks through Elsa's meditative apprehension as he intriguingly produces a piece of paper from inside his navy blue jacket breast pocket.

The quickly sketched drawing scrawled upon it causes Elsa to look up at her handsome Prince who never ceased to amaze _her_ , with unqualified curiosity…

TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

 _Minutes later…_

As Elsa enters Egeskov Castle to see the guests leaving the Throne Room for the Knight's Hall gathering, her anxious Papa was waiting impatiently in the Hall's doorway passage, tapping his foot for her to appear so all of them could depart.

Just one glance in his icy blue eyes as she glides in, Elsa realizes that King Agdar's tolerance to suffer her foolish romantic entanglement with this ' _Dane'_ she had gotten herself engaged to was all but spent.

She could see her mother, Queen Idun, doing her best to codify him so as to give Elsa some waning and oh-so-precious time alone with her prince, but the Ice Queen was still pensive to approach.

"Elsa! Elsa! Here she is at last, Idun! That ' _breath of fresh air'_ took you quite a while, young lady." About to go out onto the grounds in search of her himself, King Agdar was the first to sense his ice queenly daughter reenter Egeskov Castle.

The anxious man had been held back from leaving the throne room by Idun during the ceremony before, and had bolted it as soon as the ceremony was complete. He now suspiciously eyes Elsa's flushed features as he glances around her for any unwelcome Danes.

The most handsome, youngest one in particular.

"Where is Prince Hans?" Agdar asks cautiously, looking over Elsa's shoulder when she enters the Knights Hall to join her parents, alone.

It's not that the King of Norway felt guilt exactly. He was half-panicky that eager Marshmallow- ahem, Snow Beast - may have caused Prince Hans' untimely demise at the Ice King's mental urging. But the chill in King Agdar's icy veins was also half-pleased at the radical idea.

"Hans is _fine_ , He's still out there with Marshmallow. Did you send Marshmallow out there to spy on us, Papa?" With a smirk on her pretty features, Elsa, in an even tone, accuses her father in the sweetest manner of spying on his twenty-three-year-old daughter who just happened to be the Queen of a nation in her own right. Elsa was growing more confident in her role as an independent woman too, with Hans to always support her in all her endeavors.

"N-N-no. Not at all. I simply alerted your Snow Beast to go and fetch you, my child, now that the ceremony has finished, because I wish to return home to Arendelle shortly." Agdar conjures up the excuse as he guiltily tugs at his naval high collar seeing his daughter and his wife's accusatory stares up at him.

Though he was a demanding Admiral and jealous father, King Agdar was still a good man, enough to be gladdened to hear that Prince Hans was in tact, and not a victim of his icy rage via the gargantuan Snow Beast.

"Tonight…already…" Smiling through her sadness, Elsa murmurs with a tinge of melancholy upon her lovely face. Queen Idun touches her child's cool cheek with warm sympathy for her feelings in turmoil.

"Elsa! You missed Eugene's knighting ceremony! It was so incredible! Right, _Sir_ Eugene?" Giddy with the evening's excitement, Princess Rapunzel, dragging her lackluster husband behind her, shows off her guy's new valorous medal, as she elbows him in glee. Eugene had been sworn into the Danish Knights of the Order of the Elephant hero's club that King Herbert had offered to his one child whom he could never truly claim, with a small degree of recognition to his _natural_ son in this way.

"Yeah, I feel like an absurd, proper fool with this around my neck." An overdressed Eugene complains as he uncomfortably shifts on his feet to tug at the red collar with the ridiculous embossed gold _Loxodonta Elephantae_ that was hardly Eugene's ideal of chic chivalric representation.

He gives Kaleb a sideways smirk as the Crown Prince of Denmark passes this way. "Our old Pops with his shaky sword at my shoulder, hovering around my neck area, was one thing, but all this… Just look at this silly ' _dubleu'-_ thingy _,_ white breeches, velvet straitjacket and all they got me suited up in! I feel like a blinkin' convict– _ahem_ – with all these crazy buckles and straps tying me in. Sir Eugene, RE? Hmph! Give me a break! Who asked to be a _Ridder_ of the stupid _Elephantine_ order, anyway? I prefer just good ole 'Flynn ' _Rider'_ any day! How am I ever going to live this down with the guys at the Snuggly Duckling all attending this fiasco?" Eugene's mortified eyes bury in his hand at all of chuckling faces of the tavern boys all laughing it up at his expense, pointing fingers at his silly high collar and furry funny ceremonial suit all during the knighting ceremony.

"Eugene, Keep it down! Someone may hear you!" Queen Arianna fiercely whispers a motherly warning as she and her husband King Friedrich overhear his rant during the mingling cocktail party. She then raises her wine glass congenially and pastes a quick smile on her still lovely features when Prince Ivers and his pretty wife Marguerite pass, entertaining the curious ambassador of Avalor.

"Just get me out of this monkey suit, Sunshine, so we can book it ASAP." Eugene pleads with Rapunzel, who had already been briefed of their quick departure with King Friederich and Queen Arianna at King Agdar's insistence. They would all travel by ship with her sister Queen Idun back up to Arendelle for their own Norwegian knighting ceremony that Elsa intended to collect Hans and Eugene for in the first place.

"Sounds like more fun… Just so's all the evil pirates and vicious sea monsters have sunk to the bottom of the ocean by the time we get back to Norway's _lovely vacation spot_. And I don't have to get trussed up like an antiquated loon…" Eugene was entertaining all these comical thoughts spinning in his head as his interested eyes watch Elsa speaking to diplomat after ambassador after envoy all drooling in her stylish wake as the shapely Ice Queen all in violet velveteen glides about the room like a sleek cat.

 _Speaking of lovely things from_ _Norway_ _… Boy, Lillebror… Have you got yourself one platinum, silky kitten caboodle…_

 _He purposely mangles the phrase to more suit his naughty thoughts._

"Eugene." Rapunzel seemed to have the uncanny ability to detect when her Eugene's mind was wandering to subjects forbidden to husbands, i.e. by wives.

"I think being all tied up and restrained is a good look for you, Fitzherbert. All you need are the handcuffs now, Raps, and he'll be set." Cassandra teases her rival, seeming and feeling quite out of place at the stately ceremony and now in the ornate Southern Isles' Knights Hall beside Rapunzel, as she perceives her friend's need to soon escape.

"Come on, Eugene. Let's go say goodbye to your father." Rapunzel sighs, feeling acutely all the day's exciting events and emotional farewells to her new friends that she already felt a part of the family.

The Westergaard clan was that extended large family the lonely gal always wished for, and her never dull Eugene unwittingly provided her with even that. "It is 'happily ever after, after all' for us, isn't it, Eugene?" From her dreamy gaze down to her full stomach and its occupants to add to the family tree that the creative girl would no doubt illustrate on the wall when they got home, Rapunzel was at last contented in saying this. It may have taken the headstrong girl years to realize it, but she was certain she was ready for their happy end now as she smiles up to her handsome rogue of a hubby.

"You've got that right, Brownie. Now we start a new dream." With more wisdom than many gave the orphan thief credit for, with one hand to his wife's full stomach, Eugene then fluffs his sentimental girl's layered wafts of brown hair with a loving smile that appreciated the thought of that fantasized family more than he'd ever admit.

"Yep! But for now, my sire awaits. No jokes please, Cass." Eugene smirks with less bitterness and more compassion for the man he never thought he would give the time of day. But the orphan thief about to become a father himself soon, now had grown up from being that discarded little boy with nothing into a mature man with everything to look forward to.

"Talk about an elephant in the room." The witty handmaiden can't help but let out one more little sneering jibe at her preferred sparring partner to her new acquaintance. The saucy young adventuress takes to Job's tall, dark and silent arm - _that self-possessed Cassandra found rather appealing_ \- where the big Caribbean man had been like a shadow all evening, quietly standing by his friends, Eugene and Rapunzel.

"It's the _Ridder af Elefantordenen_ , (Knight of the Order of the Elephant) which happens to be the highest order of Denmark, for your information, _Cass_. Knights of the order are granted a place in the first class of the Danish order of precedence.'" Eugene stresses over his shoulder with a snobbish air repeating some of the lines from the ceremony that the herald proclaimed to the dark-haired woman in her fancy white veiled garb.

"You don't even know what that means, do you, Fitzherbert?" Cassandra rebuts in her semitone snide voice with a pair of rolling eyes as she leads Job away to help her gather the Snuggly Duckling gang scattered across the festive room in her inimitable, no-nonsense style for her father, Captain Schmidt and his guardsmen to shepherd home.

Cassandra's insolent question gains a stuck out tongue from Eugene Fitzherbert, R.E.

Well, maybe he wasn't too mature. But Rapunzel wouldn't trade her thief with the heart of gold for all the lofty princes in the world, handsome as all these guys dotting the room may be in resemblance to him in some crazy, serendipitous way.

TTTTTTTTTT

"Anna! Get ready to go soon, _min spadbarns_ (my little child). Your Papa is quite anxious to head out home tonight. Kindly Prince Jurgen has assured us that he would be personally escort us back to Arendelle in the Søværnet's swiftest royal yacht." Queen Idun holds a welcoming hand out to her fluttering about other daughter who had been danced off her feet in a dizzy daze by the Duke of Weselton.

The little man with spectacles enjoyed to dance more than his aptitude allowed — ' _with the face of a chicken'_ —until Anna was quite dizzy. But the feisty ginger couldn't turn down the enthusiastic Duke she and Elsa had recently befriended, after Kristoff had left to see that Sven and Svala and the horses were fed and groomed and ready to travel.

Queen Idun was anxious to board that vessel going North, with Prince Hans safely upon it, after she had to fight hard with her husband for the knighting ceremony in their own kingdom to still take place, despite King Agdar's anticipated contradictory, chilly reception of a certain red-headed young man's proximity to Elsa on the ship all the way home.

Cagey father Agdar had been eyeing the way Elsa had been mooning around the Knight's Hall saying her farewells to each of the Danish princes and their wives whom she had made unlikely acquaintances with in her time here as their 'maid'. Delighted mother Idun knew from that certain glow on her Elsa's radiant features that her daughter had not merely taken a quick stroll alone out in the sunset as it descended to twilight under the rising moon.

"Our Elsa is like the hothouse flower that has tasted fresh sunlight and clear rainwater to blossom to her full potential, my love. She has proven her strength and resolve and creativity to adapt to any situation here in this kingdom where she and Anna have made so many influential and lasting friendships." Idun speaks sensible pearls of wisdom to her stiff-necked husband quite enigmatically, befuddling the Norwegian King for a contrary retort as she always outfoxed him with her wily words.

"Yes… But I needn't wonder why the Danes have been so very _accommodating_ to our girls." With a prejudiced glance towards the multiple Southern Isles Princes mixed into the crowd, particularly the savvy political leader of this country, Prince Anders, Agdar brushes at his ginger moustache with that bit of sarcasm under his deep baritone. He watches their once debilitatingly shy and introverted Elsa greet and weave her elegant way through the maze of pleasantly interested royals and ambassadors like she owned the room.

With King Herbert's pleased gaze and nods upon her every turn, that thought wasn't too far from the truth. The old King was already directing his political son and his cabinet gathered for the birthday bash to draw up some beneficial trade agreements with Arendelle mainly due to his affection for its lovely Queen.

"Mama! Do we have to go so soon? It's such a wonderful party! It's too early to leave before all the enjoyable parlor games! I'm having so much fun talking and dancing with all of these actual, real live people! Please, can we stay a little while more?" With a great big wheedling smile on her adorable features, Anna was fully embracing the music and lights in this ostentatious house of Egeskov and all that its now friendly inhabitants had to offer this energetic girl.

Enthusiastic Princess Anna was the life of any party and wished to stay up all evening to waltz all through the night with her buttery Snow Prince, and talk with everyone, and play each game to be entertained by with all new friends from around the continent to meet! Anna clumsily spins and dances in rhythm to the classy orchestral music playing in the background, her equilibrium still a bit off after Weselton's dance foray.

But her more taciturn Papa was in no mood for frivolity, nor the interest to linger around the home kingdom of his former rival, nor his new challenger for Elsa's affections with those come hither green eyes.

Namely Westergaards.

"No, Anna. No more arguments. We leave shortly." King Agdar's icy eyes guardedly gaze around the undesirable noisy Great Hall of Egeskov which was full of the disliked royal house bloodline all chattering and hobknobbing with one another and their guests.

"Party pooper." Anna purses her pouty lips and leans heavily against the refreshment table – nearly knocking the punch bowl over – in grumbled protests of her stuffy parent's militaristic order to leave the fun festivities prematurely.

"What was that you said to your father, Miss?" The chill behind his eyes making his tall and imposing posture all the more arresting, Agdar raises a perturbed demanding brow down at his rebel in braids who had been so brashly saucy to her patriarch in public.

"Ummm… Tarty Popper?" Rearranging her spicy words, Anna quick grabs a square of proffered raspberry tart filled pastry to cover her naughty mouth to her inquiring parent. But her reckless action causes the silver tray she had scooped up snag on the lacy tablecloth.

With all her might, Anna gives an unintentional disastrous tug of the silver tray full of tasty tarts and mouthwatering muffins as she begins to trip and fall forwards towards her distressed parents, her Papa gliding on a quick patch of ice slick he created to catch his little gingersnap's fall before she went top over teakettle.

From the sloshing over punch bowl to the carefully stacked silver trays of hors d'oeuvres tottering at their heights; to the back-and-forth swaying of the elegantly lit candelabra that decorated the gold gilt table full of Queen Louisa's trembling polished tableware and quaking fine porcelain china—all of it, perfectly balanced before 'Hurricane Anna', now begins to tip over…

{" _Hang on, Baby!"}_ Kristoff mentally projects to his step-and-fetchit little wife as he rushes back into the room to swing through the glass doors like a superhero swashbuckler from the outside where he had been busy attending to an undisclosed new venture.

His able arms and great big powerful hands manage to steady his tipsy girl in her attempt to borrow trouble and make a slippery mad grab for everything falling. Delicate polished silverware clatters to the marble waxed floor in her clumsy wake as her Papa was doing his best to steady her.

The quick-thinking Wind Whisperer makes quick contact with Princess Eugenia's beloved pet doggie Blysk who had been dozing in his mistress' arms at the far end of the long refreshment table.

The normally pampered pooch springs to action to make a death-defying athletic leap from Eugenia's surprised grasp to do as Kristoff strategically asked. The furry Russian Svetnaya Bolonka doggie knocks down the lance from the metal gloved hands of that empty knight suit of armor. The silver lance (just missing an oblivious Ruddi's oversized ear, had his quick Princess Maria not yanked him away) perfectly pierces through the other end of the lace tablecloth, effectively pinning everything remaining upon the fancy table to safety, before all the royal glassware and fine porcelain dishes could come crashing down.

The majority of airborne pink frosted cupcakes Anna had sent flying high towards the ceiling of the pristine Great Hall in her calamitous accident was one that Ice Queen Elsa, whilst stabilizing the shaky glassware with her deft ice from clear across the room, had cover for her little sister here, too. The intelligent young ice wielder masterfully creates small little snow puff clouds, much akin to the one she whipped up for Olaf, beneath each rising and falling sweet confection.

Idun watches how a jaw-dropped Agdar was staring in pleased wonder of his elder daughter's magical cryokinetic save of the delicate glass porcelain on the table. The Ice King was extremely impressed at how Elsa could calculate, from a distance even, just how much or how little ice force was necessary to not shatter each fragile piece of glass or porcelain ceramic.

The air-light cupcakes upon their own sparkling snowdrifts, care of her talented big sister, float back down to the silver tray that Kristoff athletically catches each dessert back upon with a little shake of his own buns.

"Gotcha." Looking rather dapper in his golden yellow royal guardsmen jacket uniform, enough to make some of the snobby ladies and several of the maids swoon, Kristoff works in conjunction with Elsa as he places the full tray back into Anna's pleasantly surprised hands just in time for the orangey Princess to be pulled upright by her stalwart defender from her father's obliged arms.

"Whoa. Cool." Anna coos up at her big blond teddy bear.

"They're even tastier served chilled, Elsa!" Anna, without missing a beat, takes a big bite out of the pink frosted cupcake and revels in the cool whipped, cream cheese frosting.

Everyone in the room, though tingling with a pleasantly frosty chill on this warm early autumn day in the Southern Isles, is tickled pink to applaud the entertaining floor show that these droll Norwegian royals presented. That's when a windblown Hans, smoothing his mussed hair back, enters the room. His eyes, seeking her out, instantly knows where she is, becoming entranced with his Elsa's enchanting orbs.

As if for his sole benefit, a radiant Elsa, extending her elegant arms and creative hands, was unafraid to show off with a flourishing light a flurried mist of powdered snow, followed by bursts of snowy festive shapes in hearts and stars and intricate snowflake patterns outside the open glass patio door to dazzle the spectators. They all curiously peek out of the warm castle room and soon put their hands together to see the Ice Queen's artistic ice mastery firsthand as her ice fireworks' culminate into a a snowy design of Egeskov's own coat of arms and the proud heritage it represented for those who would inherit it for generations hence and those yet to come.

"Bravo, Elsie! Ah, there you are, boy. Is she not a wonder, Hans?" King Herbert was no exception as he congratulates his future daughter-in-law for her magical reaction that in part with that quick thinking Snow Prince of little Anna's, saved his Knight's Hall from becoming another glass shattered, chaotic mess on his birthday.

"She is that and so much more, Father." Full of unbridled admiration at Queen Elsa's impressive frozen enchantment that he caught the tail end of when he arrived, Hans answers breathily to his parent. King Herbert, full of contented good spirits, claps Hans on the back firmly.

"You must put some more meat on your bones, boy, if you're to be our Elsie's stable rock in times to come." King Herbert encourages his terribly thin, wiry son to fatten up as he compares Hans' svelte, thin frame with his more robust brothers as Prince Peiter and Prince Franz come by to inspect what these interesting Arendelle royals were up to.

"Like this strong young fellow of Princess Anna's. Thank you for your assistance in averting another disaster, Snow Prince." While his Captain of the Egeskov Guard Jorgensen had been eying the mountainman sporting his unit's uniform since Kristoff had entered the room, Herbert was not at first entirely certain about this strapping young man's royal bloodline, either. But the formerly portentous King decides right here and now that he no longer considered European royal blue blood as the be-all and end-all when it came to heroism and worthiness, if deplorable Count Rügen was any prime example.

If Elsie's adorable little sister Princess Anna was so fond of this capable-looking lad, the King of Denmark would consider him worthy to address, too.

"Uh, sure. No sweat." Practical Kristoff was less awe-inspired of this intimidating old king than most. He blushes with an embarrassed arm raised uncomfortably over his head as King Herbert thumps his fist against the Ice Harvester's solid chest.

"Prince Kristoff is a fine example of our honest, hard-working and diligent Norwegian stock." Queen Idun speaks up to the King for the industrious lad. "And he's good-looking with a lot of muscle, too." Idun softly adds behind her hand to her daughter with a squeeze to Anna's palm with admiring eyes upon the young blond Ice Harvester with the rippling musculature.

The mother and daughter approvingly watch Kristoff swiftly move to the other end of the refreshment table as he sets the tipsy, empty knight's suit back upright in a snap after Rune and Ruddi in their clumsiness had knocked it down many times in foiled reassembly. All three men exchange hearty handshakes after Kristoff dexterously assists the hapless twins replace the knight's shifted pieces and relinquished lance into proper place. Kristoff gives a nod of gratitude to helpful Princess Eugenia and a scruffed pat to her now wide-eyed and bushy-tail dog, Blysk. The usually sleepy, sullen dog wags up at the man of nature with friendliness.

"Blysk deserves some credit. He liked being a hero, too." Kristoff smiles gratefully down to the pampered and furry unspoken jouster of the evening.

The Russian Crown Princess Eugenia and her giddily giggling sister Maria nod back at the tall blond boy with their somewhat intoxicated father, the Czar, granting him a quick bow in respect, to which the invaluably sturdy Kristoff has to steady the big eastern European royal up to his feet, too.

"You could say that again, Mama." Anna was as proud as punch when it came to her helpful Kristoff. She already witnessed how Papa blew off Hans for Elsa, and she was not going to let her grouchy father do the same to her dreamy guy, too.

 _Our marriage is way past signed, sealed and delivered_.

Anna muses with a tingling body all over as she begins to drool. Her dream of getting back to the interrupted honeymoon soon with her hunky mountain man was way sweeter than the cherry topping on the cupcake she was lustily munching.

"It looks like you'll have your hands full with that one, too, Agdar. Feisty and proud of it. She reminds me of her mother in days gone by." Wandering over as he sips his glass of sherry sedately, Prince Anders could not help but toss the little gloat tease at his sparring partner before he turns his dapper attentions to Queen Idun who smirks up at her jilted lover coyly.

"I pray you to have a safe and unencumbered journey home with your miraculously recovered parents and Queen Elsa, Flutterbudget." Using the old pet name that he once addressed his youthful fiancée to Anna now, Anders seemed to enjoy rankling Agdar just for the fun of it as he dares to brush his snide lips to the back of Anna's shocked hand quite gentlemanly.

"And just think…this lovely lass could have been mine…" Anders ponders, as he keeps hold of Anna's hand, just loud enough with laughing eyes that dared Agdar to react as he tosses the remark into the ring. But with a quickly hummed bar of 'Greensleeves', Idun's healing hand that quickly drapes her across her irritated love halts his cold hoarfrost from forming, as she directs her fiery gaze to Anders one of warning to back off.

"Umm…Thanks…for the party?" A baffled Anna looking between her parents and this strangely charming man, could not stop the weirded-out blush from rising to her cheeks at this suave and debonair, mature Prince's waggish politeness.

Then with one last challenging stare into Agdar's frigid eyes and a sweeping bow to Idun, the Danish Chancellor bids his leave to join where his wife Frederika was patiently watching and waiting in the doorway with their two similarly aged daughters inquisitively looking at Elsa and Anna.

"I don't like him." Taking his place beside Anna, Kristoff remarks decidedly out of nowhere once Prince Anders had left the Arendelle clan, and gives the departed older man a standoffish look as he passes.

"Agreed." Did Kristoff pick up on Agdar's begrudged antipathy at the Danish Chancellor? Or did the manipulative politician rub the honest soul in Kristoff the wrong way, too?

Either way, a calming down King Agdar was satiated enough to leave the rational, commonsense mountain man alone.

 _At least_ , _for the time being. Now as for the other one…_

Agdar's eyes vigilantly watch Prince Hans snake through the party to attend to Elsa with a glass of punch, along with some hushed serious words exchanged in secretive collaboration.

As if sensing King Agdar's icy gaze upon him, Hans excuses himself from Elsa who had become engaged in pleasant conversation with the Austrian conductor.

"Admiral Bernadotte, if I may speak to you on a matter of impending import?" Hans quickly cuts through the Knight's Hall to approach a startled Agdar with this forthright address.

"Speak, Vise Admiral." The measured King of Arendelle responds, showing respect to Hans' father who was mingling at a table not so distant.

"If I may have your permission, Sir, to oversee the transport of your kingdom's livestock, i.e. the horses and reindeer, and certain other extemporaneous passengers—" Hans begins to present, but the Ice King's patience was growing thin.

"Yes, yes, sir. I leave those mundane details for the animals in our equipage under your command, if you so wish." Agdar answers impatiently, not seeing the imperative necessity of bringing chain-of-command to this paltry chore of the six or seven equestrians and reindeer to be corralled on board the ship they were to be supplied.

He, as Admiral and Ice King, had a far more pressing problem on his mind to contend with concerning his entourage's travel accommodations.

 _I suppose I will have to attend to that predicament during the journey on my own terms and timeframe. Perhaps it will be necessary to catch up to the rest of the family later, though it will loathe me to leave Elsa alone on the ship with that Dane meandering on board…But as her father, I can not leave that harsh task to my girl. She will travel home first class in luxury with her mother and sister, as a royal Queen should._

"Thank you, Sir! It will be handled with the greatest alacrity and perseverant forbearance." With aplomb in his motivated step as he meets Elsa's heartening gaze, Prince Hans dashes out from the room in much animation as he turns to nod over everyone's heads to signal Kristoff.

"Strange lad." Agdar murmurs under his cool breath. Although, as he squeezes his Idun's soothing arm under his, he couldn't refrain from the lofty thought that the mark of a responsible minded, good officer _was_ to be concerned even about the small minutiae that impacted the little details for those who served under him that Agdar himself was a stickler for.

But that assiduous attention would be rather boring to a royal of the Southern Isles, or so Agdar thought.

 _Extraordinary young man, indeed…_

"Wouldn't Princess Anna's strapping young man also make a grand addition to our naval guardsmen division, Jürgen?" The bearded King remarks in a teasing playfulness as he rejoins the Arendelle party giving Elsa a wink.

"It would be a 'fair swap', as the sailors say, now that our littlest brother will be serving as the Sjoforsvaret's Vise Admiral, eh? Though I don't know if this mountain boy looks like he has sea legs…" With more than little bit of envy at Hans skipping so many ranks due to _whom_ he knew and not _what_ he knew in all the years that this seventh-in-line Navy man had put into his lifelong naval career, Prince Jürgen remarks with a superior simper on his face. He looks Kristoff up and down as the Søværnet naval Kommander recalls Ruddi and Rune's outlandish insistence of flying reindeer and amazons that turned out none too scatterbrained.

"Fair swap?! Ha! My _Snow Prince_ Kristoff is worth all bakers' dozen of your Danish toffee cookies. And he's got way nicer legs than any of you." Anna grumbles beneath her breath, as a wide-eyed laughing Queen Idun was the only one to pick up her younger child's feisty comeback in defense of her rugged mountain man.

"Oh, Anna. The years and strife haven't changed you one bit, my little hoyden. I am very happy to say." Idun motherly wipes the pink frosting from Anna's upper lip with a napkin. In his own amusement at Anna's sauciness to these Danes, Agdar could not dissuade the amused smile creeping beneath his moustache despite his best efforts to remain stoic.

His smile though turns serious when he observes the young blond Snow Prince quietly tidying up the potentially messy scene with one steady arm around his obliviously munching wife.

 _My little girl is this dirt-covered plebian boy's wife…_

Papa Agdar was cold as ice towards all young men, even this relation of the venerated Snow Queen herself. The King of Arendelle was about to make another blind edict concerning this other child's questionable relationship that he had not been present for, to be adjudicator of their worthiness, when Elsa speaks up.

"Lucky thing Kristoff is always there to catch you when you fall, Anna. Thank you, Kristoff. I don't know what Anna would do without you. The Lord truly brought you two together, just as He knew when she would need you most." Elsa says to her little sister when she finally makes it through the crowd all wanting to wish the Queen of Arendelle felicitations on her announced engagement to one of Denmark's princely sons.

Elsa directs her decisive blue eyes pointedly towards her moody father with a no-nonsense stance and set mouth that stated plainly here on this point she would certainly be adamant upon. As Royal Queen, head of the family, and leader of the nation in his absence, Elsa had exercised her right to bless Anna's marriage to Kristoff Bjorgman. She would not stand for that being rescinded, by King or Papa or anyone, who dared her authority on this closed subject.

Because Kristoff was not only a good man, a constant protector and perfect match for Anna, he loved her without question. He had seen her at her best and at her worst and he still loved her—perhaps even more for knowing it all. That kind of true love was enough for Elsa, she now understood the pair's deep bond better, due to her new and wondrous miracle of love with her own Prince Hans.

"Yes, Anna is so fortunate to have such an honest and noble man as Prince Kristoff." Queen Idun pipes up for Elsa, glad to hear her more timid daughter lay down the gauntlet before her lordly father in one of his moods, to dare challenge her regal decision and undermine her.

King Agdar vacillates his frosty gaze between his two girls and his wife on either side of him as all four of the tight-knit family members watch Kristoff disappear like the wind again out the patio door he had swooped in through a few minutes ago.

"I suppose…" Agdar begins to give in to their feminine sway. "But it appears your brave Ice Harvester may be a bit reticent in addressing his King, despite being so ' _noble and honest'_." Agdar mocks their words of praise for the lad, with a simper beneath his ginger moustache that he won this match of wills, leaving the Ice King satisfied with himself enough to chill out and sip his wine.

TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

As everything settles back down to normal at the after dinner reception as the visitors begin to depart, Idun shrugs to Anna's quirky smile. This was, after all, a test of all tests for her husband who was still coming into his own with his still recently restored body and embraced powers just made manifest in him. Add all this emotional turmoil and tumult of surprise engagements, rebellious children, and contentious old rivalries on top of it, and the recluse King was doing fairly well for being at his icy breakpoint.

Even if he was being stubborn and inflexible and uncompromising when it came to his daughters' well-being, Idun had made it her life's mission to match him wit for wit.

Long ago, Queen Idun vowed on their wedding day to watch over this complex, beautiful, obstinate man she gave the fullness of her heart to all those years ago.

And never looked back once since. _Oh, how I love you for all your funny ways, min alskare..._

"Where has my youngest boy got off to now, Elsie dear? Why is he not socializing here with you? Agdar, I'm sure you will make certain he is well cared for, serving in your Navy, won't you? Just be sure that you give him plenty of leave time to visit his aged father for instance. And of course, he must bring along my favorite 'chamber maid' Ha Ha!" In an ebullient turn of mind, King Herbert teases Elsa with a wink, as she smiles in embarrassment at this funny name for her that she disliked except when Hans' father said it with such caring.

"May I say, Agdar, your Elsa is a treasure trove of wonders! This magical little lady gave my life back to me, however long that remains. So my kingdom will be forever in her debt and yours, King Agdar, Queen Idun, for sharing her blessing with me. It does my heart a service to be around her. Thank you." Gaining an audience of his sons and their families, the visiting other royals, their delegates and dignitaries, the King of Denmark uncommonly bows his head down to his Norwegian counterparts, and Elsa especially, kissing her in surprise as he brings her elegant hand to his lips.

"Thank you, your Majesty. You are too kind." Again, Queen Idun must be the one to speak up, her husband having a difficult enough time digesting that King Herbert expected Prince Hans to bring Elsa back 'home' to Denmark to Hans' new estate for 'little visits', when all Agdar wished to do was shake the dust off his feet of this troublesome nation once and for all.

But how could he forbid Elsa to return here when the old King had his heart turned to a friendly neighboring disposition?

Though the Ice King could so easily do just that, his better, more sagacious half would not let him be so pigheaded and confrontational to his Southern Isles' counterpart and neighbor.

"I'm looking forward to receiving an invitation to a dazzling wedding in Arendelle as soon as my Hans' naval tour of duty is completed to your satisfaction, King Agdar. Then our children will join your household and mine in tranquility." Herbert says to Agdar, who nods evenly with clenched jaw.

"Have patience, my dear. Though I understand how restless such a long wait can make young lovers. God speed, until we meet again." King Herbert then begins to leave on Lars' arm.

"Now where is that boy? I have a bit of advice to waste on him concerning proper treatment of the fairer sex that he should pay no mind to. That young lad obviously knows how to win a lady's delicate heart, without my _vaulted_ opinion." King Herbert chuckles at himself in jollity at his birthday and his fondness for Elsa and her family that would soon be joined to his, as he bids them all farewell.

"So adieu for now, my little Elsie. I expect to see you and Hans back here and settling into Holsteinborg very soon." Herbert squeezes Elsa's hands, his heart already sad to see her go.

But as he looks at the sea of young faces around him, his sons and daughters-in-law, and his grandchildren he was now eager to meet and make the acquaintances of, Herbert knew that he would not be lonely anymore. All thanks to the kind graces and sweet generosity of this singular young woman who would always have a special place in his heart.

"But must you leave us so early? There are many empty bedrooms in this old castle! Even with my multitude of other guests, there's more than enough to put you all up for the night at least so you can travel by daylight tomorrow, perhaps." King Herbert says hopefully, though the pragmatist in him already knew the answer in King Agdar's unwavering look of immovable ice in a pale blue haze.

"Thank you for your kind offer, King Herbert, but Papa wishes us to begin the return journey home tonight. May I say, your Majesty, how very beautiful your kingdom is and how truly wonderful everyone here, upstairs and downstairs, have been so welcoming to myself and my family. So, I do look forward to visiting again as soon as we can." Elsa, the little girl who had such a terribly rough time being tactile close to even those in her immediate family, shocks Agdar when she throws her arms around the tearful old bearded man's neck with a warm hug.

"Yes. Will meet quite often now that we are to be family and my Hans has his estate just a hop, skip and jump across the Great Belt close by here." The elderly gent never felt so keen on having someone visit him as he wished of this marvelous young lady who had touched his soul in ways he never knew he never knew.

It was even more heartrending that it was his outcast son Hans who had brought this precious young woman to Herbert in his old age. He would always be grateful to Hans for her comfort, and wished to be a good father to him from now on.

"You've made this the finest birthday I have ever had, Elsie dear. I hope by my next celebration to call you my daughter? I know I'm rushing it a bit, but I would enjoy seeing what lovely grandchildren such a handsome couple would produce. Where is my boy, Hans? I have a few pointers on the subject I'm quite proficient at, it would seem, from the brood my poor dear Louise endured for me." King Herbert, slow, yet steady on his feet after much beneficial exercise throughout the day, wanders away in search of his youngest son he's now taken a keen interest in for the love of this special blonde beauty, who, at this exact moment was blushing red from ear to ear.

The Arendelle and Corona Royal families bid their respectful goodbyes to the princes and princesses of Egeskov after farewell and final birthday wishes to King Herbert.

"Goodbye, Elisabeth! Goodbye, Isabelle! Goodbye, Adelaide and Amalia! Goodbye Lujza!" Sociable Rapunzel waves to each of her new friends and Hermine particularly at the end.

The ditzy blonde was waving her arms wildly to her new best friend, tears welling in her big brown eyes that they were now parting.

"Come visit us in Corona any time! I would love to see you all, especially after…" Rapunzel become a little shy at her own alluding to her baby – _no,babies_ – that soon would be gracing Corona Palace's quiet halls with their noisy and wonderful sounds of life.

"I can't wait to see yours, too, Hermine!" Rapunzel cries out, suddenly remembering that she was not the only one in this delicate condition.

"Me, too! I mean…your baby…And mine, too!" Stumbling on her words as she chews on her knuckle, Princess Hermine giggles enthusiastically. Her worrywart, stoic husband Prince Berte places his arms properly around his little wife's shoulders as they were seeing Rapunzel and her family off.

"Can we go, Berte? I mean… After the baby comes, may we go visit Princess Rapunzel in Corona?" The naïve Princess sweetly asks her not so abrasive anymore husband with batting hopeful eyes up at the young father-to-be with the Van Dyke beard.

"Why not?" The ninth-in-line Prince answers, his brothers Mattias and Ivers shrugging back when their own prospective mates nod positively at this proposed trip to the continent to visit their new friend.

"Oh yes, please do vacation in Corona's exciting land with so many new attractions, like the Corona horse races that I'll be organizing to open soon! Please consider yourselves all invited to come to it in the Spring! You must bring your best steeds then to compete!" With enthusiasm for his new idea in a marked exuberance for life after his recent heart attack struggle gave him a new lease on it, King Friedrich nods to the princes seeing them off at Egeskov's regal front portico.

The Corona Royal family was already entering the carriage Maximus had been hitched to with a Danish steed up to carry the Prussian monarchy to the naval port for the ship's launch. In front of their royal coach was another equipage of their Arendelle relations with Hans' horse Sitron at the helm. Behind was a cavalcade of carriages awaiting the Corona guardsman and the Snuggly Duckling chaps whom Cassandra and Job had been rounding up.

"Yes yes, Friedrich. Corona will be the prospering, shining artistic colony once more, with your new infrastructure plan to make it bountiful again, my love. But maybe we should see to our daughter's pregnancy first before we establish your race course…?" Always the levelheaded realist in the family, Queen Arianna starts to speak up against her husband's outlandish, expensive plan.

Rapunzel, after all the upheaval of emotional goodbye, feels rather bilious as she's escorted into the carriage by Princess Lujza's strong husband, Peiter.

"By the way. Where is Eugene, Rapunzel?" King Friedrich inquires of his nonpresent son-in-law, but Rapunzel only manages to shrug.

Pascal, on the other hand, points his accusatory red tail to where the noisy thief had been enticed to play a quick round of a 'friendly' game of craps with his new 'Storbrors' as the gregarious Snuggly Duckling gang watched on with shaking heads

The charming rogue was rarely as lucky in games as he believed he was in life, seven and eleven rarely turning up, with snake eyes far more prevalent.

"C'mon! I've got a new family to support! Leave me the pfennings, boys, and just take this elephant around my neck!" Offering his royal medal just awarded rather than his cold, hard cash, Eugene could be heard to cry as his gamble fails once more. A dashing Didrik and frowning Franz cajole and muscle in no uncertain terms for the dubious Prussian Prince Consort to ante up whatever coinage he had in his inverted pockets as their meager winnings.

"Fine! I thought we were having a family-friendly game there, but you Danes play rough! I won't let you off so easily next around. See if I let you win next time, ' _Storbrors'_." To her gregarious and satirical Eugene Fitzherbert there would always be a 'next round', a second chance, and a new dream.

And right now, as he slides into the carriage seat beside the love of his life who he wanted to spend the rest of forever with, now with a family of his own to arrive soon, Eugene already knew he had hit the jackpot in his Blondie/Brownie/Sunshine _liebling_ named Rapunzel.

"Some of your friends downstairs in the kitchen sent these here baskets of food supplies for you and your family on your journey home, Elsie – I mean your Majesty, Queen Elsa." Daphne, at Princess Marguerite's express instruction, had gathered special cheeses and cold meats from the larder for her friend's journey, with sweet Daphne throwing in a few cookies, too.

"Lukas and I will miss both of you sisters very much indeed." The plump ladies' maid smiles as the Queen of Norway and her younger sister take turns hugging the dark haired woman and her little son who were some of the first kind people they met and were welcomed by here in the Southern Isles.

The pudgy little boy with the startlingly cerulean blue eyes trots up to the carriage. "Say goodbye to Mister Olaf and Mister Marshmallow for me, Miss Elsie!" Lukas cries out with a happy wave.

Elsa and Anna smile back, knowing the pleasant little child now out in the open, no longer hidden behind gates or closed doors, had so much future now with many people who could share his love.

"Lukas gave back his little snowman you gave him - I think his name was Wilhelm - to Olaf because he didn't want to break up the family." Daphne explains as she glows down at her child that she would never have to hide the truth from or leave behind ever again, thanks to the two shining lights of Anna and Elsa of Arendelle.

"What a mature little boy you are, to be so selflessly considerate, Lukas." Elsa says with genuine admiration.

"And now you have so many folks to love and play ball with you! Keep practicing that killer swing you've got, Lukas! And teach these girls here how to play, too!" Physically fit Anna cries out encouragingly to the chubby cheeked child whose future was no longer so deprived only due to a mistake of the past, now righted out in the open sunshine.

As for another Southern Isles' prince who had made major blunders in his past…

"Where is Hans anyway? Did Papa scare him away? Or did he wet his pants with all the excitement of getting **_everything_** that he **_ever_** wanted handed to him on a silver platter?" Anna didn't exactly begrudge Hans his good fortune of being accepted and endowed with new wealth and richness from his forgiving parent, but she did find it _extraordinarily_ ironic at how lucky that undeserving Red could be. Especially when it came to her precious big sister Elsa handing him her love and devotion, to top it all off.

"No, silly." Elsa shakes her head with a chuckle at Anna as the pair were being fitted into traveling clothes by the maids that Elsa had made fast friends with. The braided girl whispers her tease about her former enemy who had curiously left during the ceremony and only came back to the reception to ask Papa some doofy question about the horses' transport, or some such dull subject.

"Hans has been preparing for our journey home tonight. We do have some… shall we say…abnormal passenger requirements." Elsa answers as a deep maroon Southern Isles cloak with a grey furry trimmed hood is pulled up by Daphne to frame Elsa's lovely face.

"Oh, right! Sven needs a special corral to be harnessed to on board the ship. I think that must be where Kristoff boogied off, to get Sven and Svala and the trio of Snow Queen horses to be loaded onto the yacht's cargo hold! Poor Sven. His hooves weren't made for ship strakes. Olaf, on the other hand loved ship travel– Hey! Elsa! What about –" Anna bundles up Elsa's carpetbag full of goodwill mementos from the princesses, Danish cookies from the baker downstairs and Hans' childhood sketchbook she had found with Lukas in the Fattigskole mission school, when she suddenly recalls a certain _tidbit_ of information.

Rather, a _BIG_ bit of information.

"Is Hans really okay out there with Marsh–" Anna begins to freak out, remembering her gigantic snowman friend's contempt for the redheaded Prince who had dared to dismember him.

"Hans has it all taken care of, Anna. I trust him with all my heart. So we needn't worry. My handsome Prince can do anything." The platinum blonde Queen softly speaks with the confidence in her lover to take on the monstrous task of facilitating the twenty-eight foot tall Snow Beast for his voyage back across the Skaggerak Straits to the North mountain in Norway.

"That sounds like the words of a girl madly in love to me." Queen Idun wanders over to her daughters as her King was receiving final warm salutations from many of the visiting ambassadors and Royal envoys after the Arendelle leader announced his departure from Egeskov.

The delighted mother, hearing her elder child's lovesick esteem for her own young man at long last, pets her oldest child's delicate brow as she readjusts Anna's askew braids under her traveling cap.

"If you trust him with your heart, why not everything else?" Wrapping her arms around each of her girls, Idun poses the question to her children. She languorously gazes upon her Agdar, who was doing his best to control his raging emotions and surging powers from intersecting, with success at her gentle prompting. Queen Idun was as sure as the sun rose in the east that her King would come around after some time passed for his rankled senses to calm down, alongside her constant persuasion.

 _You are good man with a deeply loving heart that just needs a little tweaking now and then, min alskare (my lover)…Even if this destiny for Elsa is objectionable to you now, just believe in our future…_

Queen Idun nuzzles into the shawl wrap that made the small framed Queen look quintessentially superb as her quick mind was already strategizing how best to handle her difficult man in the near future for the sake of her daughters.

"But last I remember, Elsa, Marshmallow isn't as fond of Red as you are. You were the one there to see Hans cut off the big fella's leg to give him that limp, right? That's **gotta** leave a mental scar. For real. Marshmallow still has nightmares about that. He told me." The feisty ginger girl shakes her head with an unsure scowl and hesitant twisted lip.

Anna remembers vividly how, at a slumber party with Olaf at Elsa's North mountain abode last summer when Kristoff was building the addition, the extra large snow creature accredited his lack of sleep at night to the dreadful incident with that foul Prince who maimed the well-intentioned monstrous tower of ice and sent him plummeting off the cliff.

"Yes. But you're the one who said that we don't have to live in fear, Anna… It's what's in here that counts most to wipe away any resentment and pain. Hans taught me that. He is so witty and brilliant and noble, now that he's truly atoned for his sins, my Hans can win over anyone's heart." Elsa speaks quietly as she presses a cool, but steady hand to her sister's loving heart and its beating chest with a warm gaze up to her mother.

The three women, with hearts full of love for their respective men, move towards the front promenade of this impressive castle of Hans' birth.

But as Elsa's eyes gaze around the exquisite gardens and the Ladegården stable to look back at Egeskov's seaside grandeur that meant so much to her for its sentimentality one more time under the twilight of evening, Anna could sense some sadness behind her sister's eyes, lingering behind the strength.

Anna notices how Elsa gingerly fingers the freeze-dried preserved, icy blue forget-me-not bouquet that Hans had placed in the Ice Queen's purple velveteen jacket's boutonniere.

"You really love him… Don't you, Elsa?" Anna asks tentatively, squeezing her sister's arm that was trembling with so much emotion, it was palpable. But they were emotions of contented warmth and hopes for happiness that only a woman sincerely in the throes of love could feel.

"I adore him more for all that he is, every moment that passes, Anna." Elsa nods truthfully with tears forming in her luminescent eyes when she thinks about what miraculous love she and Hans had discovered together, under God's holy mercy.

Princess Anna may not have been the most brilliant young woman in the world when it came to scholastics, or geometry, or history, but she understood the workings of the human heart better than most her age, perhaps born out of her desperate need to be loved by her sister she adored.

"These memories Hans and I made here in Egeskov…I want to hold onto them forever, Anna!" In a fierce whisper, Elsa reminisces of the tentative, uncertain affection that had blossomed and bloomed under incredible circumstances into a glorious love affair for Elsa and her implausible Prince Charming.

As Anna gazed directly into Elsa's eyes that glisten with the same sparkling shimmer as the forget-me-not flowers affixed to her chest over her heart, the ginger girl decided that there and then, she would do everything she could to help Elsa – and yes, _Hans Westergaard_ – achieve their dreams of love on the road ahead.

"' _The heart that truly has loved, never forgets_.'" Wise in the ways of love herself, Queen Idun recites a bit of Thomas Moore poetry that expressed Hans' and Elsa's relationship coming to fruition. She too, a language of flowers aficionado, recognized the forget-me-not frozen-in-time corsage Elsa was nurturing where it had been buttoned to her jacket over her heart and all the romanticism it meant.

"He'd better not. Or I'll kill him." Taking her Mama's word at face value, Anna drolly states. Then the three chuckling Arendelle women move towards the waiting carriages with Maximus and Sitron leading the teams where King Friedrich, Queen Arianna and Eugene and Rapunzel were already assembled with loving smiles as they watch from the carriage window.

Seated in the carriage, Elsa watches with a delirious sigh when her Prince Hans Westergaard breathlessly, and so dashingly gallant, comes trotting up from where he and Kristoff had been busy in the massive Ladegården stable complex readying their entourage of equestrians, rangifer, and others for the trip north.

Elsa's besotted eyes through the window watch Hans be warmly greeted and gain a proper sendoff farewell from each of his brothers. To be followed by King Herbert, emerging from his opulent Egeskov Castle's front archway, where Hans respectfully gives a sweeping bow to his father.

King Herbert pleasantly shocks everyone – Hans especially – as the older man wraps his thin framed youngest boy up in a big bear hug. It may have been unbefitting a royal, yet was aptly very poignant for Elsa to note the Lord's splendid influence in all of their hearts and minds and souls with the indescribable power of the forgiveness of love.

Hans too felt moved at this overt and uninhibited affection his parent had never shown an inkling of before to the shunned child. With unrepressed tears forming in his eyes, the young prince feels an emotion stir his heart of a cherished sentiment he never knew he would so appreciate as he returns his father's loving embrace for the first time.

"Thank you…Father. I will visit with you again in due time…if you so please?" With the tentative question the little boy inside Hans yearned for his entire life, the glassy eyed young man looks to King Herbert for his concord of another meeting on such amiable terms.

"I look forward to that immensely, Hans. You will always be welcome here…my son." Sensing the spirit of his Louise enveloping their embrace, Herbert whispers with just as much emotion, noticing how much this son more than any of the others, resembled his wife most. Perhaps, beyond the striking red hair color, there was something so expressive in his green orbs when touched emotionally, just as his Queen possessed.

Herbert was sad to part their embrace, so long in coming as he touches a hand to his old heart that an exceptional young woman taught how to beat again.

"Nothing will make me happier than for you to bring your lovely new bride to visit me here. Or better yet, host me to dinner in your palatial estate of Holsteinborg. Our Elsie will make a grand mistress of that auspicious house for you, Son." The King smiles over Hans' shoulder to Elsa, who nods and blushes demurely back, imagining herself in that new and exciting role of 'keeping house' for Hans Westergaard, who gazes back at her through equally shy, yet proud eyes.

After his father lets him go, a smiling, happy Hans switches gears instantly to give a staid, deferential salute to King Agdar, who was standing at Egeskov's entrance, decorously awaiting leave-taking of King Herbert. The King of Arendelle exchanges a curt nod with the young man who was the cause of so much angst in his neat family unit.

An impatient Agdar looks to the royal carriage provided for his Arendelle family's travel to the Odense Havn ( _Port_ ) where the newly launched ship of the line 'Dannebrog' had just come into port from its latest expedition in the Arctic.

The King of Norway gives the pleasant King of Denmark a cordial handshake goodbye as he prepares to summon the Ice Beast obscured somewhere on the grounds to escort the large snow monster to the seaport personally via his projected ice sled to run alongside Marshmallow.

"Now that we are to be intimately connected as… family, _one way or another, twenty-five years later_ … we, your neighbors in the Southern Isles do hope to visit with you and your lovely bride again once you get settled back in your kingdom of Arendelle, Agdar." The Ice King is then waylaid to give the same genial parting nicety to an insistent, slyly smirking Danish Chancellor Anders who appears at the front door to see the Arendelle Royal family off, however, the resulting frostbitten handshake does not go off so smoothly.

"Agdar! Don't dawdle in bidding your farewells to the kind princes of Denmark, if we wish to get to the ship before midnight." Idun was just about to hop out from the secondary luxury Landau carriage where she and Elsa and Anna were awaiting their irrational husband and father before the duel between these bitter rivals she imagined might take place, should she not again intercede.

As she stumbles to find her way out of the carriage, the perceptive Queen detected that Prince Anders would not back down from his rival's challenge this time. She watches in frustration on men as a whole to see Anders' frosted right hand lightly and painfully touch at the hilt of the sword sheathed upon his ceremonial regal belt.

Agdar's icy eyes glow with cryokinetic wrath surging behind them, as an elongated sharp bladed ice sword stealthily materializes at the Ice King's challenged side.

And time stops as both men wait for the other make the first move...

Luckily before any further international incident ensued, the dashing thirteenth-in-line Prince of the Southern Isles gives them all one last surprise.

Unaware of all the tension between his brother and Elsa's father behind him, with a loving stroke to Sitron's muzzle and a lasting glance behind him to his Queen Elsa leaning out the carriage window, Hans passes the large carriage with purposeful quick strides rather than entering it, for the journey to the docks.

Instead, Prince Hans swiftly mounts the waiting steed pawing to go where she was waiting for him at the entrance of the Ladegården.

Like an expert sky rider, Hans urges Snaedis, the Snow Queen's flying white mare who had grown fond of this handsome young man with the velvety voice and gentle touch, to take to the darkened skies at the lead.

Thoroughly taking the attention from the Agdar/Anders' confrontation, not to mention the breath away of everyone watching from the castle, two dozen beautiful pristine white horses become visible, cantering out in an iridescent veil of smoky magic from inside of the Ladegården's frost chilled stables.

The perfectly matching equestrian _harras_ of the Snow Queen's own spectacular flying horses follows him with the huge sleigh that Elsa had masterfully constructed before at Hans' clever architectural request. The giant sled structure made entirely of ice emerges from the stable complex with a smiling Marshmallow comfortably seated for his ride home.

"Where the hell did all those fillies come from?!" Crass Eugene, never losing his tongue, could not contain his astonishment as he throws open the door of the carriage carrying the Corona royals to hang out and survey the fascinating view.

"I know from your bugging out eyes that you're a little more than mildly interested in seeing those fine fillies on display, Max. But don't worry, I won't say a word to Fenella mooning away for her wayward stud when we get back home in Corona." Flynn Rider teases his favorite equine adversary with a little bantering punch to Maximus' blushing muzzle that snorts in derision back at him.

Speaking of another young filly who would always believe in her stud's constancy…

"Prince Hans asked me to create a craft to transport Marshmallow so that neither Papa nor I would need be concerned with his travel accommodations. He wanted for us to have a more leisurely trip home—all together." Elsa follows her mother and Anna's hurried steps outside their carriage to explain her intrepid fiancé's thoughtful consideration of herself and her recuperating father in the great cryo-effort that would be necessary for both or either of them to facilitate the enormous ice beast alongside the nautical vessel's return voyage home.

"Did he now?" A skeptical brow raised, King Agdar abandons his confrontation with Prince Anders to march towards the enormous ice sled to inspect what his little girl Elsa had rapidly crafted at Hans Westergaard's ingenious design.

"After Hans mentally contacted me – _which was weird how he knew how to do that, because I did not know he could do that. Anyways_ – about this crazy airborne transport idea for Marshmallow that he dreamed up, I called in my _Muther's_ – _ergh_ – the Snow Queen's string of flying mares to pull this huge sleigh Elsa made that Hans designed." In between mutterings to himself, Kristoff expounds this plan to a quizzical King Agdar from where the blond Snow Prince was seated on Sven hitched besides Svala at the rear of the train of two dozen flying white horses he himself had scrupulously harnessed to the monstrous sleigh at clever Hans' carefully planned schematic.

Kristoff shrugs down at his father-in-law on this wild proposal of the youngest Mr. Westergaard. The mountain man himself at first harbored some apprehension at the redheaded Prince's outlandish suggestion that the diligent redhead had put down speedily pen to paper.

"Will it work?" A hushed Agdar asks as Kristoff shows him Hans' quickly sketched diagram in more awe than suspicious misgiving. Staggered by the straightforward complexity of the initiative, King Agdar stares at the fine lines on the resourceful numbered graph that put into account wind chill versus speed velocity, to weight gravity ratio, to the atmospheric barometric pressure of the jet streams in this projected altitude level of the troposphere.

 _Now I know why I made you my Vise Admiral, young man…_

"We're about to find out." Kristoff chuckles at Hans' audacity as the Wind Whisperer mentally readies each of the twenty-two white mares and Sven and Svala as well to take to the sky at Hans', on Snaedis, lead.

Intuitive Kristoff marvels at seeing the same crazy exhilaration reflected in the older King's blue eyes that the down-to-earth Ice Harvester saw in Hans' green ones when the Danish Prince first laid out the proposal to him.

All at once King Agdar realized that this was an undertaking of a well-educated man who possessed the intelligence on his feet to accomplish calculus and trigonometry as well as apply the proper equation to temperate invection zones. Once upon a time, lonely boy Agdar himself may have envisioned himself to endeavor this shrewd innovation in his younger intrepid years.

So Agdar must tip his hat now to the young man whom he had chosen to be his second-in-command who had the daring to set it into practice.

"Impressive…" For a few seconds Agdar forgets just who this young Prince with the plucky acumen was in his admiration of Hans' enterprising industry.

But when Elsa claps her hands noiselessly to her pleased lips and she and Idun both glow at his praiseful words, Agdar remembers his place and who he was complimenting as he was practically kicking the wheels of this cryo-inspired vehicle.

"For a plucky rascal." The King awkwardly brushes back his ginger blond hair that had fallen out of place in his animation at inspecting this enterprising proposal. The Ice King exchanges a wince with a frightened yet excited Marshmallow, whom Kristoff had mentally instructed to hold on tight to Elsa's sled when it took flight.

"Well, Vise Admiral?! We are anxiously awaiting your signal." Taking a deep breath to stabilize himself, King Agdar moves back to the carriage that he urges his ogling family to enter with all due haste.

Hans, upon his flying steed, had been analyzing the skybound area in the atmospheric conditions for ideal conditions, deciding it was a go, as he hovers Snaedis near the waiting carriages.

Elsa's eyes had traced the young man's every sleek line cutting across the rising moonlit horizon above her like he was some mythical divine being.

 _Oh Hans… You are spectacular…_ Elsa loses herself in another reverie of imagining what it would be like flying through the clouds of moonlight with her handsome hero's arms tight around her…

 _This is what it's like being in love, isn't it?_

"We are ready to launch at your command, Admiral Bernadotte!" Hans projects his tenor voice to carry over the winds over Egeskov to his new leader.

And his voice. _Ahh_ , his velvety voice echoing through the sky she would never forget…

Elsa watches Hans respectfully salute his father from the distance of his airborne steed as the newly reinstated Prince Hans Westergaard leads the flying entourage skyward. Under the Snow Prince's collaborative watch of his elemental mother's mystical creatures, the massive sled climbs through the airwaves over Egeskov Castle's opulent estate.

Marshmallow lets out a giddy roar of sheer bliss to fly through the sky and look down on places he never thought he'd ever see from the magical ice sled pulled by its equestrian and reindeer horsepower above.

"Whew-hoo, you the snowman, Marshmallow! Looking good up there, JustHans!" He chortles to see his tiny friend Olaf wave his branchy arms that Anna must keep a tight hold of, as Elsa ice magically sustains the scatterbrained snowman's head from tumbling off in the rushing headwinds outside the open carriage window. Olaf waves up to the redhaired prince at the front helm and the golden blond Snow Prince at the port end of the exuberant Snow Beast's sleigh ride in between.

Marshmallow smiles from snowy ear to ear upon the Ice Queen's huge luge where the Snow Queen's magical two dozen flying horses and two reindeer pull the magic craft Hans envisioned above the pair of Royal carriages that were rapidly moving to match their speed.

Responsible leader Hans had been thoughtful enough to even consider for the confined snowgies stashed in Marshmallow's compartments to at least have a front row seat to the air show. At the intelligent Danish Prince's encouragement, Ice Queen Elsa had mimicked the glass dome over the locket she had created for Hans earlier.

Expanding her abilities yet again with her love's gentle prodding, Elsa had forged several icy 'ver-glass' scenic windows at the side of the clever compartments her father had implemented in the Marshmallow's vast armored chest area.

"Ooh-ahh! Ahh-Ooh! Woo-whoa!" The inarticulate little snowballs full of mischief all bounce and bop like wild pinballs around their small containment areas, just dying to escape to go for some hair-raising skydiving fun. But fortunately, Elsa had secured the glass' transparent ice coating, knowing by now, that these tiny frosty fellows had a penchant for naughtiness.

Hans peers around his shoulder at the animated sea of fractious frozen rascals smashing themselves to the glass casing trying to break free, giving Marshmallow pause in his exhilaration.

But if Vise Admiral Westergaard possessed the poised confidence of leadership to charm even an angry Snow Beast to be his comrade, the Prince of the Southern Isles could handle a dozen or so frosty critters with fist-sized snowballs for heads they were using for battering rams.

All their discombobulated chaos combined didn't stand a chance versus the charismatic charm of the obvious ringleader of this flying circus.

"If each of you fine fellows sits back in a more sedate manner, my new Captain of the Guard Marshmallow will choose which one of you will first be elected to sit up here with me to learn how to navigate this elevated flying vehicle as my ' _wingman'_. All subsequent well behaved sky sailors will be allowed the same opportunity as my snowgie squadron in due patience." In his lofty, lordly voice, ever the charmer Prince Hans exudes a magnetic allure to inveigle these tiny snowmen of Elsa's to get in line and comply willingly.

All the snowgies abruptly snap to attention and pause in their bedlam to single toothily smile and bat their icicle lashes up at a peeking downward Marshmallow. Each well-behaved creature gives their best attempt at wheedling for favor from the suddenly command important, puffed-up big snow monster at his first responsibility as the handsome new Lord of Holsteinborg's deputized vavasour.

* * *

Down below, King Agdar and Queen Idun and their family were cozy inside the carriage that drives along the bumpy roads at naval Kommander Prince Jurgen's direction beside the coachman toward the Odense Havn for their journey home.

Everyone in the royal carriages follow the breathtaking vision of valiant Prince Hans on his flying steed with his magnificent entourage, Marshmallow, snowgies and all, cutting across the dark skies above.

"Is that…little _Slush_ up there on Hans' shoulder?" In bemused consternation, a smirking Princess Anna nudges her sister seated primly across from her in the horsedrawn carriage.

"No…I believe it's Wilhelm." Knowing her own 'children' well by name, Queen Elsa answers her squinting-eyed sibling. Elsa herself marvels at how Vise Admiral Westergaard possessed such decisive command over even these normally misbehaved, impish snow minions of hers.

"That lil' snowgie sure gets around!" Anna whispers back to her best friend in giggled delight. "But that crazy Red twit better not drop him! It's a long way down!" The peppery ginger girl can't help herself from adding her slur to the dauntless man stylishly traversing the night above them with a tiny bobbing up and down snowgie strapped to his broad shoulder.

Wilhelm, the blissfully smiling snowgie, was secured by the ice enchanted silver chain cord where Ice Queen Elsa's eternal unbreakable locket was now and forever entwined around Prince Hans' neck, and his heart.

"I trust my Hans..." The pale blonde beauty's eyes glimmer with loving pride at the way Hans' left hand was adoringly placed over the gleaming miniature of his cherished love. With the snowflake ring adorning her own left hand finger, Elsa, by now, realized that her handsome prince up there in the heavens, gliding against the backdrop of the full moon through the twilight skies on his white flying horse like the hero of ancient epic poetry, could achieve anything.

United as one, Elsa's heart overflowed with an unforgettable love for this one amazing man who could revolutionize the world around her with the brilliance of his mind. He gave her the deep abiding trust of his heart that everything would turn out just fine, if she only believed.

As for her handsome Prince Hans, he was determined, now more than ever, to prove his worth in King Agdar's eyes by serving in his Navy to the best of his abilities until that happy time when he and Elsa would be allowed to become husband and wife.

 _My wife! Can I still just be dreaming that you have accepted my proposal, my Queen? All the love we'll share… All the days of joy…and the nights of bliss ahead for us in a lifetime together… But first I must earn my treasure in you, my darling Snowflake..._

Only then, the eager young man in Hans realized, could he claim his prize of his beautifully unsurpassable Elsa of Arendelle. He had already gained her forgiveness, not by the works of his hands alone—that could never be enough—but by the grace of an Almighty forgiving God who showed mercy on this lost sinner and gave him hope beyond all understanding in this glorious lady's amazing love and devotion.

So, as a dreamy Hans rides the winds, the thankful prayer would always be at his back to swiftly pass the time until he could return to his love finally and fulfill his dreams of having a place to belong, with someone to love and be loved by, in it.

Hans was as resolute in his commitment as Elsa was in her devotion to trust that they would be finally together someday, matter how long it took. Neither would allow this cloud of sadness to hang over the joy they found in one another as the sweet song of the love they discovered in the whispers within their souls carries Hans and Elsa through this night, and for all the nights to come.

For they knew that their linked souls would some day find all the dreams they dreamed together if they could just weather the storm a little longer. The glorious aura of their true love would dawn a glorious morn where there would be no more hollow emptiness, no more lonely regrets, no more lovelorn sadness in their forever bonded hearts.

Concurrently under the bright warm glow of the moonlight while they begin their new journey, Queen Elsa in the carriage on the earthen road, holds tight to his frozen-in-time, forget-me-not corsage at her pounding chest; and Prince Hans upon his flying mare through the windy skies, presses the crystalline eternal ice locket of his love's beauty and artistry close over his warm beating heart.

Over her snowflake dazzling diamond and blue topaz ring's promise, Elsa blows an icy kiss to travel the cool wind currents up to her Hans. This absolutely ' _direct kiss'_ graces his yearning lips with the sweet moisture of her tender devotion, causing Hans Westergaard's bursting heart to sing Elsa Bernadotte's praises in their poignant serenade to one another as he crosses over the wistful moonlight.

' _In these dreams, I've loved you so_ _  
 _That by now I think, I know_  
 _What it's like to be loved by you_  
 _I will love being loved by you!'__

As stars appear as if just for they two, both Elsa and Hans were certain that this miraculous love the beautiful pair discovered through their dreams would cross the miles. The time would pass with a strength and belief to keep their hearts pure within for only each other, no matter whose path they may cross along the way.

Though they may be physically parted for a period, their linked souls would be right beside one another, enjoying dreams of each another now that they knew what it's like to love and be loved in return.

All the while under the Lord's vast heaven of the everlasting spirit of love that kept no record of past wrongs, the prayerful couple's souls would be blessed by a Presence in which they shared in a Love stronger than the strongest love they'll ever know.

That 'Faith, Hope and Love' would sustain their hearts as they travel different roads beneath the same stars…

…towards a happy ever after of their own, when Elsa and Hans meet again, where the 'Greatest of These is _Love'_ …

' _Alone and awake, I've looked at the stars_ _  
 _The same that smile on you_  
 _And time and again, I've thought all the things_  
 _That you were thinking too__

 _I have dreamed that your arms are lovely_ _  
 _I have dreamed what a joy you'll be_  
 _I have dreamed every word you whisper__

 _In these dreams, I've loved you so_ _  
 _That by now I think, I'll know__  
 _What it's like to be loved by you_ _  
 _I will love being loved by you!'__

* * *

 **The saga continues… in "Frozen Again: Love Never Ends" ^_^ Coming soon!**

* * *

"Believe Me, All Those Endearing Young Charms" poem by Thomas Moore 1808

"I Have Dreamed" song from the musical 'The King and I' by Rodgers and Hammerstein

* * *

Thanks for participating in all the drama and romance of Book 2 "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love", now at its close.

Please return to the continuing, fulfilled romance/ family tale soon to be published as the final Book 3 of this trilogy titled: **"Frozen Again: Love Never Ends"**!

Please look for this new 3rd part of 'Frozen Again' on Fanfiction on an Easter release start to see Helsa's long-suffering romance finally come to fruition, along with Kristanna, Agdun and Eupunzel's continuing adventures and love stories. Book 3 will span into their lives together and own future families in the tradition of fairytale storytelling with these amazing characters we all have grown to love and adore.

Thank you, again, for your time and patience in your interest in my work over these past two years. Andyou have my eternal gratitude for avidly reading and encouraging my Frozen inspired sequel, its sequel and now the finale to come, in this extensive, dramatic tale of discovering love and friendship and adventure through our Brother Jesus' bountiful Redemption of sinners, and our Father God's forgiveness of His children.

We hope to see you again here reviewing and supporting our newest book in the 'Frozen Again' trilogy, to begin soon, scheduled for the most blessed gift of Redemption - Easter day - in just over a week! ^-^

God bless you all until we meet again in this exciting, vibrant world of our hearts' imaginations, 'Frozen' in time!

Love, your friend and humble authoress,

HarukaKou

 _P.S. Be sure to follow all 3 books of this 'Frozen Again' trilogy to get the latest chapter update! :) And Olaf and Eliana love reviews!_


End file.
